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Bloodless Carnage

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"Careful with that sword. You could poke someone's eye out!"

"Wound! We need a wound here! Make-up!"

It doesn't matter how many bullets were fired or how powerful the weapon: you won't see entrance wounds, exit wounds or any blood at all anywhere on or near their targets. Shooting victims simply fall down, leaving neat and clean crime scenes. The only way you can tell a shooting victim from a poisoning victim is that the latter will usually be grimacing. It's almost as if they were made of sawdust instead of flesh.

A subvariety of this trope allows for a small amount of blood, looking more like a ketchup stain from a particularly sloppy lunch, to mark the location of a wound. This will sometimes lead to such absurdities as a character with a cut lip conspicuously dribbling blood, while another character who is shot to death is shown with his/her wounds bone-dry!

This was a common trope in Action Series, Adventure Series, and Crime and Punishment Series until recently; for various reasons of taste and censorship, blood was never shown no matter how thoroughly perforated the victim was. Of late, though, shows like CSI and Law & Order have begun to be more explicit/realistic about just how messy most violent deaths are.


Fantasy and some historical works, similarly, will not show blood even when someone is cut or stabbed. In some examples (particularly shows geared towards younger audiences), swords and other bladed weapons will seemingly only be used to clash against each other, and never be shown to draw blood. Two swordsmen may exchange blows and blocks for several seconds, with missed attacks that Could Have Been Messy, or wrestle in a Blade Lock, but whoever wins will find an opening to non-lethally knock out his foe with a single punch, or perhaps throw him to the ground and force surrender at swordpoint. Scenes of the aftermath of a battle will show broken or dropped weapons, discarded shields, fallen banners, dozens of arrows, and the occasional helmet or three, but no clearly visible dead bodies.

A second, somewhat more humorous variation is to depict a relatively harmless conflict or game, such as dodgeball, paintball matches, or water gun fights as if it were a real war or slaughter. Complete with dramatic slow-motion scenes, over-acted last words, and splashes of paint or water where blood would spray.


May be justified in a science fiction setting using Energy Weapons, although it's a common misconception that the massive heat produced by the beam would instantly cauterize the wound before it had a chance to bleed. This is not necessarily the case, as that's actually only possible within a specific temperature range; go over this, and things get hot enough to boil the blood. While a laser in a movie may just knock over people with little signs of blood or burning, it's best not to dwell too much on what the wounds from such a weapon would really look like...

PG Explosives is a subtrope where explosions specifically manage to injure or kill without visible wounds. See also Pretty Little Headshots, Made of Bologna, and As Lethal as It Needs to Be.

Contrast High-Pressure Blood when the amount of blood is unrealistic by being excessive. Compare Symbolic Blood, Alien Blood, and Machine Blood when they use a substitute involving robots or fantastical creatures that have something resembling blood. If the viewer is given the choice of having this or not, it is Adjustable Censorship. Usually goes hand-in-hand with Never Say "Die", a Disney Death, and a Disney Villain Death.


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  • The infamous Sportka ad with the decapitated cat.

    Anime and Manga 
  • Noir is surprisingly bloodless for having a pair of gun-wielding assassins as heroes. This was originally done to placate TV censors but was not added back into the DVD run after audiences seemed to find the effect artistic. Blood was present when you saw Kirika bleeding at the beginning of Episode 7: "The Black Thread of Fate" and all over the floor in Mireille's flashback to her parents' death, which greatly added to the impression of an intentional artistic choice, reflecting how death had changed from tragedy to business for her.
  • Neither of the successor series of Noir (Madlax or El Cazador de la Bruja) feature blood.
  • Most of Death Note's early episodes tend to avoid this trope, with occasional exceptions like when Kichiro Osoreda was run over by a car after attempting to hijack a bus, or when Matt was gunned down by Takada's bodyguards. Most deaths in the series are caused by mystically induced heart attacks, so this makes sense. Mikami and Light's death averts this.
  • Most of Lupin III uses this; Goemon and Jigen can wipe out entire armies without any visible blood spillage. This is ingrained enough into the series that when Lupin III: Island of Assassins used Gory Discretion Shot instead, it just didn't feel right. Then Lupin III: Blood Seal ~Eternal Mermaid~ averted this, with blood flying everywhere from bullets, blades, and giant Spikes of Doom.
  • Slayers is mostly bloodless for 2/3 of a seasonal run, even when Gourry slices up a regime of baddies. While it allows joke characters to return, the last parts of a season manage to kick up the level of blood and cast aside this trope - notably, the second anime season warranted Clothing Damage for most of the villains, and then, in a memorable scene later on, Amelia gets a near-fatal, bloody wound from a demonic attack. The movies and OVA series play this trope completely straight. Any manga and the light novels, on the other hand, avert this.
  • Kara no Kyoukai plays with this in the fifth movie. Usually, it doesn't shy away from showing lots of blood, but a scene at the beginning of the movie of Tomoe stabbing his mother is surprisingly dry. This is then turned around and we find out that the lack of blood indicates that something else is going on, and later when lots of blood appears the effect is rather jarring.
  • Revolutionary Girl Utena falls straight into this in the series finale, where a character gets stabbed in the back with a sword, and there is zero blood. Clean through either a lung or the stomach. Possibly justified by the fact that said character is wearing black, which blood would not readily show up on. However, there is no blood on the sword, nor is the character lying in a puddle of their own blood. There isn't even a clothing hole where the sword went through. The only thing to indicate they even got stabbed in the first place is heavy breathing and cringing. Also, for a series that centers around constant sword fights, the swords never hit an opponent during fights, just the other sword or their opponent's clothing or hair. Except when Touga gets sliced down the back outside an official Duel—he does not bleed, but later requires extensive bandages and a sling. With other things in the series, it's easy to draw the conclusion that the Duel Arena literally does not allow anyone to bleed or die without losing their rose.
  • Claymore uses this for stylistic contrast. Fights are shown with fairly little blood but several scenes show extremely brutal aftermath.
  • Hellsing surprisingly, uses this in its TV series incarnation. In the Manga by which it's based, and the later produced OVA series, there is a LOT of blood everywhere whenever anyone, human or vampire is killed. Due to situations with the censors, however, the TV series had to do something to minimize the amount of gore. The solution was to make the Vampires Alucard shoots turn to "Sand" or "Ash" as they die. Some blood was added for the DVD release, but the series is surprisingly low on blood for being a show about vampires.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • The episodes where the Talismans show up; despite both Uranus and Neptune getting injured (the former shot by apparently invisible darts and the latter ripping herself free from some sort of thorny vines), neither bleeds.
    • Averted in the first season, where Nephrite bleeds quite a bit before he dies, though the blood is green.
    • ...but also played straight with Jadeite, who gets run over by a jumbo jet but only has a few scuffs to show for it.
    • There are a few instances in early episodes where Sailor Moon gets scraped or cut by a youma, drawing a small amount of blood that then goes away one shot later.
    • Also averted with Taiki, one of the Sailor Starlights from beyond the solar system, bleeds briefly after squeezing a rose, poking his hand.
    • Averted in Sailor Moon S when Neptune fights in front of Uranus for the first time and receives several large, bloody gashes on her back for her trouble. Played straight and averted later in Stars when all of the sailor soldiers suffer bloodless deaths yet several bloody hits are landed on Galaxia. Seiya's injury later in Stars also counts as an aversion.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima! generally averts this by merit of people not getting killed at all, but when minor character starts getting erased from existence, they go in a bloodless fashion, seemingly turning into Cherry Blossoms. It's arguably even more disturbing than if they would just have gotten stabbed or something. That said, there's plenty of blood flying around when non-lethal blows are involved, especially once the cast makes it to the Magical World.
  • Katekyō Hitman Reborn! falls severely to this:
    • This is best shown when Tsuna is sliced in the back from hip to shoulder each direction without a single drop of blood.
    • This is only true of the anime adaptation, whereas in the manga, blood is not only frequent but so is some pretty graphic stuff like Mukuro activating his evil eye.
    • The Reborn anime actually didn't have a problem with showing blood early on during its adaptation of the Mukuro arc. It's like after this particular arc, the animators found it too gruesome for the kids watching the show so they turned to Bloodless Carnage afterwards. During this arc, Gokudera, for example, took a few needles to the chest, yet his shirt began turning blood red afterwards from the injury. Looked even MORE painful then ANYTHING the anime dished out afterwards where the only times you ever see blood again is during the Varia arc when Yamamoto gets slashed across the chest in his Ring duel and much later on during the Future arc when Hibari tries to pet his porcupine box weapon, but accidentally gets his hand stabbed. Everything else is straightforward Bloodless Carnage.
  • Both of Hiro Mashima's manga, Rave Master and Fairy Tail, suffer this in their anime incarnation due to censorship laws. Especially Rave Master, which had one fight scene without blood for every 3 that had it. Given Fairy Tail aired on a Saturday-morning time slot in Japan, it's especially grating when one of the characters is supposed to be impaled but does not bleed, and then tries to stop the bleeding anyway.
    • Let's see... we have:
      • Natsu is hit by Erigor's Emera Baram wind magic, which is supposed to shred him to ribbons. It doesn't even scratch his clothes.
      • Gray is impaled by Lyon with a whole Ice Tiger from his belly and yet doesn't bleed.
      • Aria and many other people are sliced across the chest by Erza's sword, but the wounds are nowhere to be seen.
      • Gajeel's Iron Dragon's Roar, despite being composed by tons of sharp metal shards, is ineffective against Natsu.
      • Gray uses the Seven Ice Blades dance to slice Fukuro, yet the latter doesn't show signs of any wound.
      • Finally, Ikaruga, the queen of this trope. In the manga, her attacks leave huge gushing wounds on her enemies. In the anime, she says she cuts the enemies' nerves without slicing the skin. Rule of Cool?
      • Ultear stabs herself and looks no worse afterward.
    • Fortunately, the anime didn't affect a certain scene that occurs during the Gray vs Ultear fight; could even be considered a subversion of this trope. The scene, in particular, is Gray resorting to freezing his own blood as weapons after realizing that Ultear can make all of Grays ice moves irrelevant thanks to her time magic. The initial slash of Gray cutting his skin was censored, but the blood is still seen mixing with the ice as his ice blades slowly change to crimson red. As for why this scene was given special treatment, it's most likely because it plays an important part in Gray's turnaround in the fight or it was just simply too Badass to censor fully.
    • As if to make up for all of the above, Taurus cutting off a tentacle of Earthland Byro's monster octopus during the Starry Sky Key filler arc results in two giant gouts of blood.
    • Averted from the 2014 anime onwards, as we see more blood in the series, most notably when Lucy's future self sacrifices herself to save her present counterpart from Rogue's assault and when Juvia commits suicide to rescue Gray.
  • As the anime version of Bleach goes on, it has shifted more toward this than its usual blood geysers in the name of censorship (which doesn't really work anyway if limbs are being severed).
    • For example episode 193, where the characters would have coughed up blood in the manga, but are made to cough copious amounts of... spit? Or stomach acid?
    • An especially noticeable example is how when Kira fights Abirama, he cuts his head off yet his sword has no blood on it, despite flicking the blade around as if he was trying to get off some excess liquid.
  • The Studio Bones series Heroman shows no visible blood or serious injury from its numerous fight scenes. The closest you can get is the green goo that drips out of the Skrugg when they are beaten or 'killed'.
  • The survival game in School Rumble in the original manga. Justified because well, it's a game played with BB guns. The anime adaptation originally had a few scenes with blood shown, but the dub apparently decided to take it all the way and show a pool of blood for every "death".
  • Toriko's anime suffers from this, becoming quite noticeable in the Ice Hell arc — Bogie Woods's sacrum being popped out is accompanied by a stream of sparkles. It's started to let up on this starting with the Four Beasts arc though.
  • Despite the amount of violence within the show, in every series of Pretty Cure so far, no one bleeds, but you can tell if someone's hurt when their clothes are dirty. So far, there has been one, very small, very minute, very easy-to-miss subversion: One scene in Heartcatch Pretty Cure featured Cobraja getting a cut on his face. The act of the cutting itself produced an incredibly small spurt of blood.
  • Weiß Kreuz uses this extensively in its first TV series, with a few very small exceptions, and one case of Clothing Damage from gunshots without visible blood, as if imitating bloodless black powder squibs.
  • 4Kids Entertainment would often invoke this with their dubs of anime. Thanks to toning things down, scenes that originally did have blood (and weren't altogether removed from the dub) were turned into this (their dub of One Piece being an infamous example).
  • Kingdom: Zig-zagged in the anime adaptation. In duels between named characters, there is blood. But in large scale battles, defeated soldiers are simply sent flying.
  • Dragon Ball Z, when Raditz blows Piccolo's arm off. There's a couple of reddish-orange drops, but that's it.
    • Appears in the Dragon Ball Kai depiction of Piccolo using his Makankōsappō/Special Beam Cannon on Raditz and Goku. Rather than being a case of censorship, however, this was to be closer to the manga, as the version in Z had much more blood, compared to Toriyama's original depiction with none at all.
    • This is enforced in Dragon Ball Super due to the new censorship laws in Japan, a few notable examples are when Beerus stabs Goku in the chest with his claws and when Frieza tortures Gohan by repeatedly blasting his limbs and non-vital organs, in both instances neither bleeds, the only time blood is shown is flashbacks to scenes from Dragon Ball Z and in VERY few other occasions.
    • Dragon Ball Super: Broly is the first Dragon Ball movie to feature no blood, despite certain characters being seriously wounded and killed.
    • Dragon Ball was this up until the King Piccolo arc, with the most violent injuries being red or purple bruises. The only time blood was shown on screen was during Master Roshi's nosebleed moments, but once Piccolo shows up there's a sudden spike in bloody, gory injuries (with a notable example being Piccolo Jr.'s arm gushing blood when he tears it off during his fight with Goku). Compare this to when General Blue's men get hit with a barrage of arrows after walking into a trap; it's Played for Laughs, and to very cartoony effect, with the men even joking about the screw-up (Blue isn't amused).
  • In Hols: Prince of the Sun despite there being a lot of war and destruction there is no visible bloodshed, a few notable examples include a wolf getting stabbed in the face with an axe, one is shot through the head with an arrow by one of the villagers, a giant fish is shot in the eye, and Hols slices the leader of the wolf pack in half with a giant sword.
  • In Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, Sanada Yukimura slices through and impales several bandits with his katana, but not a drop of blood is spilled.
  • As with the games, no one honestly gets injured in the Pokémon anime or any other adaptations like Pokémon Adventures or Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl Adventure!. It could be justified with the actual Pokemon in that they're stronger than humans and battles don't use lethal force, but the magnitude of power just makes it dubious a lot of the times. The worst injury one can get aside from a multitude of scratches (sometimes caused by beams of energy) is either a broken limb or bloodless red patches. They don't even mention the word blood. There has been less than ten instances of blood in twenty years of the anime. The manga, especially Adventures, may contain blood however it's hard to distinguish bruises, blood, and dirt due to the monochrome colouring.
  • Jibanyan's backstory in Yo-Kai Watch has him getting hit by a truck saving his owner and dying immediately. Jibanyan was a kitten but somehow his body remained completely intact. His only injuries were a clipped ear, and even then no blood appeared.
  • Maria Robotnik's death is repeatedly depicted in Sonic X without a lick of blood. She was a little girl shot with a bullet, so some blood should be expected.
  • Pride of Fullmetal Alchemist has a strange body, even by hommunculus standards. When Heinkel savages him while in full lion form, he notes that Pride's lack of blood (and overall reaction) are freaking him out. Later on, he loses his regenerative abilities, along with part of his face, revealing his body to be a hollow container for his shadowy true form.
  • Vampire Knight: When Kaname pulls out his own heart in the last chapter, barely any blood is spilled.
  • A common criticism of the anime adaptation of Overlord is the complete bloodlessness of the Massacre of Katze Plains, a scene that in the light novel is evidently quite gory. This is a little strange because the series normally does not shy away from showing copious amounts of blood, but the third season, it seems, was rushed out and CGI used quite gratuitously.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica's Signature Scene, Mami's death is actually devoid of blood when her head is bitten off, relying more on a Gory Discretion Shot with a Sickening "Crunch!".
  • A LOT of people die left and right in The Mysterious Cities of Gold, from mooks and red shirts to many important non-protagonist characters, from things like cannons, fire, guns, arrows, spears, swords, the kind of wounds you'd expect to be nasty and bloody...

    Asian Animation 
  • In Happy Heroes, Big M. accidentally gets stabbed with a knife or similar object on several occasions. With this being a children's show and all, no visible blood appears where he gets stabbed.

  • In Michelangelo's Pièta, Jesus' corpse has no blood, bruises, or cuts despite having just been scourged, crucified, and impaled. The only wounds visible are the holes on Christ's hands and feet, but even then they're really small. Although it doesn't look much like Jesus got crucified, it gets across his whole divine perfection shtick.

    Comic Books 
  • Spider-Man villain Carnage is supposed to commit horribly brutal murders, but almost every victim shown looks clean, the only proof of death being torn clothing.
  • The Warrior Cats graphic novels, which is very odd because of the amazing amount of blood and violence in the original novels. There is some blood in Rise of Scourge when Scourge kills Tigerstar, but it goes over the scene so quickly, and there is so little blood it's ridiculous (especially considering the original version where Scourge rips Tigerstar open, causing him to bleed to death nine times). Even one of the illustrators, Don Hudson, thought this was odd. In the first Tigerstar and Sasha volume, rabbits, squirrels, and frogs are killed onscreen without a drop of blood, but apparently, the editors didn't even like a clean dead rabbit:
    I am working on the Cat book for Tokyopop and I am at an interesting point in the story. The story involves Feral cats and life in the wild. A Feral cat stops and kills a wild hare as described in the script. I drew the layout and it was approved, but at a certain point, the powers that be wanted a change. The dead rabbit looks too creepy. I understand that the pre-teen market may not be into dead rabbits, but why write it into the script? They wanted me to change the angle to obscure the hare, messing up the storytelling. My compromise was to turn the rabbit around and closing his eyes. It's not dead, just sleeping! No trauma, just a sleepy, knocked out bunny. (Comparison of original and revised sketches)
  • War comics approved by The Comics Code can take this to ridiculous and disturbing extremes—entire battle scenes go by without a drop of blood. Or with Marvel Comics, where people would bleed black goo.
  • DC Comics had Lobo, where enemies, for a time, had a vested interest in not making him bleed. Because that only produced backup.
  • The British Commando Comics. In almost 2000 issues, soldiers are shot, stabbed, squashed, run over by tanks, collide their aircraft with cliffs, even one SS mook take a grenade to the face without so much as a drop of blood or dismembered body part.
  • In a 1954 MAD feature about a Bowdlerised film of the book, a character being shot to death pleads, "Aim it where the bullet holes won't show!" Afterwards, the killer expects there to be blood all over everything but realizes that there's no blood at all since he's in a movie. (On the Book! side, the killing had been done with a knife, did leave blood all over everything, and the killer has a monologue about all the blood; the Movie! side uses a gun instead and the killer starts the same monologue before "remembering" there's no blood in movies.)
  • Wolverine's claws would, when used on any 'normal' living creature or person, produce awe-inspiring gore. Blood would spurt, organs would be hanging out of the remains, etc. This is rarely depicted (although to see what Wolverine's fights look like in all their detailed gory glory, pick up the most recent series of X-Force; or buy the Uncaged Edition of X-Men Origins Wolverine).
  • While Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja , as a Comics Code-approved title, avoided graphic depictions of blood or gore, it never hesitated to show the brutality of combat or the senseless deaths of war, including the aftermath of a mass execution.
  • This is a staple of the works of Sergio Aragonés, which help emphasize their cartoony nature. Even a title centered on wanton destruction and warfare like Groo the Wanderer will seldom show anything more than someone clutching their abdomen while (black) blood oozes between their fingers.
  • Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Comic are both considerably more violent than most versions of the series, but they lack any blood whatsoever. Several characters are caught in explosions, but appear only bruised - one example is when Antoine is caught in an explosion and goes into a coma. We only see his limp hand in the last panel, and later on, there are lots of bandages covering up his injuries. In the Sonic Universe arc "Total Eclipse", Shadow is beaten almost to death, but only takes scratches.
  • In The Amazing ‘’Spider-Man’’ # 122 when the Green Goblin accidentally impales himself with his own Goblin Glider while trying to kill Spiderman, there is no visible blood on his body even though you can see the idents where he was stabbed.

    Eastern Animation 
  • Adventures of Mowgli, the Soviet adaptation of The Jungle Book, has an extreme example. The epic battle between the wolves and the red dogs is animated as a several minutes long fight sequence with two whole canine armies and not a drop of blood in sight. The red dogs just get a bit shaggy or drop straight dead.
  • In Space Transformers the (green) red soldiers are shot down by Crackle, yet no wounds appear. Their clothes aren't even torn! However, this is probably due to the cheap animation rather than censorship.

    Fan Works 
  • Virtually any fight in Diamonds Cut is this because of the budget limitations, but this is especially prominent during the M’s death: not only is there no blood spilt, as camera lingers over his body, but the window remains absolutely undamaged when it should by rights have been broken by the sniper’s bullet.
  • In The Light of Courage, Princess Zelda shoots a beam from the Triforce of Power to sever Ganon's hand, which comes off with nary a drop of blood. The animators had originally tried for High-Pressure Blood, but decided against it due to the young age of most of the audience.
  • The Star Wars Rebels fanfiction, Ezra Lost, invokes this trope whenever a Mook gets hurt or killed but is very much inverted whenever Kanan Jarrus takes a hammering.
  • The Legend of Total Drama Island uses the variant of describing a game like a real battle. Much of the game action in the dodgeball match, especially in the first game, is written in the style of a battle scene from The Iliad, which is probably one of the most blood-drenched epics of all time. There is a minor subversion in that Lindsay does bleed after being hit in the mouth.
  • Invoked in Robb Returns when Robert executes Janos Slynt and other treacherous Goldcloaks; despite their beheading, his new sword Stormbreaker, the Ancestral Weapon of the Storm Kings, gets not a drop of blood on it. Except for the last Goldcloak, who at least took the bribe at first to help his ailing family and is willing to Face Death with Dignity; lopping his head off does leave blood on the blade.
  • The Aswang doesn’t leave a single drop of blood at any of his massacres in Ruby and Nora.
  • This is justified in Lost Causes by Toons being unable to bleed. They can be beaten up but won't show any signs of the attack.
  • Justified in Sweet Sorrow. Elise initially thinks that Sonic isn't dead because there's no blood. She associatess death with blood because she remembers finding her father in a pool of blood. However, the reason Sonic isn't bleeding is because the energy blast cauterized the wound.

    Films — Animation 
  • Ringing Bell is a pretty violent film; however it has almost no blood in it, and the protagonist suffers no visible injuries despite all the beatings he receives.
  • Kung Fu Panda 2 has Lord Shen using throwing knives to dispatch a few antelope guards and the Wolf Boss, but no blood is shown. This is despite the latter being hit directly in the throat.
  • In Bambi, when Bambi's mother is killed by the hunters, we actually do not see her dead body once Bambi realizes that she is dead. However, we do get to see a quail bleed to death later in the film.
  • In The Jungle Book, Baloo gets multiple face-fulls of tiger claws (and they're CLEARLY digging in!) without a single drop of blood shed or mark left.
  • When Gaston stabs the Beast in Beauty and the Beast there is no blood on his knife, although blood does appear on the Beast's shirt shortly afterward. This could be due to the rain.
  • The Lion King:
    • The Lion King (1994):
      • Mufasa's dead body appears to be in perfect condition… even though he fell a considerable height from a cliff, and then got trampled by a herd of wildebeest; at most he appears to be just a bit beat up and his whiskers are bent. There is some blood in the film - when Scar claws into Mufasa's paws — but it's only noticeable if you're watching the film in really high quality.
      • The hyenas eating a zebra leg before "Be Prepared" is portrayed completely free of blood and mostly off-screen. Even the leg is cleanly cut, though the insides are red as expected (though not bloody).
    • In The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, there is a scene where the Pridelanders and Outsiders get into a violent fight full of clawing and biting but not a single wound appears. Kovu gets a scar like Scar but it ends up perfectly clean and without any injury to his eye. Nuka's death is surprisingly clean despite him getting trampled by logs.
  • When Ben is killed in Barnyard he gets fatally wounded from a severe coyote mauling, like Mufasa aside from a bit of blood on his mouth and some bruising he is in otherwise seemingly good condition.
  • In The Princess and the Frog Ray's death is surprisingly clean considering he was slapped to the ground and then stepped on by Dr. Facilier, as when Louis finds him all the damage that seems to have been done is some bruising and a black eye. If someone would do this to one of his species in real life it would be quite messy.
  • Warped in Tangled. When Eugene / Flynn is stabbed there is no blood on the dagger. However, when Rapunzel inspects at the wound there is blood seeping over his shirt.
  • In Hercules, Megara pushes Hercules out of the way of a falling pillar, only to be crushed herself. There is no sign of ANY injury, even though it kills her.
  • Justified in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, where the King actually ends up dying of internal bleeding.
  • At the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Judge Claude Frollo actually falls off a balcony and to his death in the fiery molten lead below; for some reason we do not see his charred remains on the ground once Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Phoebus finally emerge out of the cathedral unharmed. Since all the molten lead has been cleared away by the time they emerge, presumably Frollo's body (or what would have been left of it) was taken away with it.
  • At the end of The Pebble and the Penguin, when Drake is crushed to death by his own boulder, if you pause at the right moment as he is killed and the boulder rolls away you can easily tell that there's nothing underneath.
  • In The Little Mermaid (1989), the two eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, accidentally take a bolt from the trident and get disintegrated. In the next shot, you see bits of their flesh and bone (and even a couple eyeballs!) sink toward the ocean floor as Ursula briefly laments over them. There is, however, no visible blood. Doesn't make their demise much less family-unfriendly, though...
    • Speaking of which, a similar fate befalls Ursula herself when Prince Eric rams the prow of his ship through her. You don't actually see her fall apart, but you do see small chunks, including a couple of pieces of tentacles, sinking in the ocean in the next few shots.
  • The Fox and the Hound plays with the trope. The bear is shot and bitten and both wounds are shown red with blood, but as soon as the shot cuts away the wounds vanish.
  • In How to Train Your Dragon 2, one dragon fatally gores another with its horn. The wounding itself is subject to a Gory Discretion Shot, but the attacker's horn is not bloody and the victim's body is shown shortly thereafter with no visible wound. Later Stoick is killed by an exploding fireblast entirely on-screen, and the only visible effect is soot on his armor.
  • Surprisingly averted in The Land Before Time V. A battle between Chomper's parents and a hungry Sharptooth results in bloody scratches.
  • Disney's Pocahontas uses bloodless carnage, and unintentionally draws attention to it in the song "Savages," where one of the Powhatans wonders "if they even bleed." They don't, but neither do the Powhatans. Particularly noticeable when Kocoum is shot and killed, apparently by a phantom bullet; despite having fallen back into the water, there's no hint of blood or any indication of a wound at all.
    The Nostalgia Chick: "But Christian Bale is ever at the ready and manages to shoot Kocoum right in the, um… spirit?"
  • Tarzan:
    • Disney's Tarzan features this twice, where Clayton shoots Kerchak, and shortly afterwards shoots Tarzan. In both instances, the areas where the wounds should be are shown but are missing both blood and the wounds themselves.
    • Subverted in one fight. Tarzan slices Sabor and her cut is clearly shown bleeding.
    • Subverted near the beginning when Kala discovers the aftermath of Tarzan's parents' death, when Sabor's bloody paw prints are shown. Although the actual deaths are off-screen.
  • In Brother Bear Kenai kills Koda's mother by stabbing her with a spear and judging by the force of the blow, she should've been bleeding pretty heavily, and later when Denahi finds the spear it has not a single drop of blood on it. Ironically, its Lighter and Softer Direct-to-Video sequel has Kenai bleeding when Nita's fiance Edka tries to kill him.
  • Disney invoked this in Treasure Planet when Amelia receives a grave injury. In the theatrical release she looked at her hand and it was covered in blood. In the home releases that was censored and thus her injury looks a lot less serious than it's meant to be.
  • There's a fairly shocking aversion in Superman: Doomsday. Though blood levels are fairly low throughout the movie (It is Superman, after all), at one point in a pivotal fight scene Doomsday punches Superman so hard he vomits blood. After some of it sprays Lois' face. From a distance.
  • There are a few instances of this in Batman: Bad Blood; a few notable examples include when Talia executes Heretic there is no blood splatter even though she shot him in the head at point blank range and later there is no blood or wound on his head, and later when Mad Hatter's head explodes.
  • Zootopia: Judy's cheeks get sliced by claws early in the film but noticeably does not bleed.
  • None of the injuries in Hulk Vs. Thor cause bleeding, though since so few apparently died it might just be them being invulnerable. Hulk vs. Wolverine is notable in that it's the first non-comic appearance of Wolverine where characters do bleed when he cuts them.
  • Near the end of The Sissy Duckling, Elmer's father ends up shot by hunters while trying to go south. There's no blood or even any sign of injury,

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Zulu is pretty much made of this. There are hundreds of bayonettings and large-caliber bullet wounds on bare-chested Zulu extras, yet no blood is shown from this (except on the spearheads and bayonets).
  • The Three Musketeers (1993) features numerous sword slashes, stab wounds, a full-scale battle with gunfire, and a character getting kicked into the spikes of an iron maiden, all without a single drop of blood.
  • Mad Max: Fury Road: Despite the high body count and numerous ways characters are wounded or killed (including one mook getting stabbed in the face and throat with crossbow bolts, a C-section, another mook getting his chest blown open, and an old lady getting a chainsaw wound to her neck) barely any blood is visible until a brief shot near the end.
  • In 47 Ronin, despite beheadings, swordfights, and multiple scenes of seppuku - while wearing pristine white clothes, no less — there is not a single drop of blood.
  • In the Twilight films, more notably in Eclipse, vampires seem to never bleed when being dismembered and decapitated. Instead, they seem to shatter, which while in the colder scenarios might be because according to the makers the heads freeze instantly, doesn't really make sense in other places. Obviously, it aids to keep the ratings low. The books and Word of God describe the vampires as crystalline, having bodies like marble or granite in quality, and their only bodily fluid to remain is venom.
  • The Dark Knight Trilogy uses this to keep its PG-13 rating. The worst injuries aren't shown in great detail and are only on-camera very briefly. This eventually gets rather ridiculous, since it's a brutal movie except for the bloodless part. The Joker even gives a Glasgow Grin to a guy, and there's no bleeding.
  • Inception is almost entirely bloodless with the exception of a main character getting hit by a single bullet. Since his wound is of major importance for the following scenes, it's examined closely, but even so, it's very small with a relatively small amount of blood.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is particularly bad about this. Not a splash of red in an enormous pitched battle scene. In a more up-close and personal scene, when Peter is jumped by Maugrim the wolf, he impales the wolf and is pinned under him for nearly a minute; despite this, there's very clearly no blood anywhere on the wolf, Peter or the sword. Strangely, the film retains Aslan's line from the book reminding Peter to clean his sword, and the line makes no sense at all.
    • In the BBC version of the movie, the entire screen turns red during Maugrim and Peter's fight. When Peter stabs him, there is no blood.
    • This happens in the second movie too. A man gets his throat slit and not only does he die instantly rather than bleeding out, but no blood was involved at all. Perhaps it was because a mouse wielding a mouse-sized sword was the one that hit him.
    • However, blood is shown outside of battle scenes such as Edmund's healing or Miraz being held at swordpoint.
  • The slaughter of Frank Castle's extended family in The Punisher (2004) film is almost bloodless, the only exceptions being himself (though he obviously survives), his father and several goons. In the director's commentary, Jonathan Hensleigh explains that watching over two dozen innocent men, women and children being brutally gunned down would have been even harder to watch had blood packs and squibs also been used.
  • This trope is very common in the pre-1990s James Bond films. Mooks are always shot in the chest by Bond, die instantly, and go down cleanly with nothing more than a mild grunt.
    • GoldenEye has bloodless deaths as well, most notably when Bond shoots all those guards in the Russian prison.
    • There are rare exceptions. Bond headshots a Soviet soldier in Octopussy, and the entry wound and trail of blood are very obvious. In a few instances, entry wounds and squibs can be seen (such as in the tanker battle in The Spy Who Loved Me). The film Licence to Kill was notable in that it showed more graphic and realistic violence than the series had before.
    • A particularly strong example of the trope in action is in Quantum of Solace where Bond murders a disabled bad guy by stabbing his femoral artery and letting the man bleed out, yet not a drop is seen on Bond or, even, the floor.
    • Live and Let Die goes so far as to have the main villain inflate like a balloon and then burst. And yet still no blood.
  • Despite having one of the biggest body-counts in action movie history, Equilibrium is for the most part bloodless with its violence. In fact, it pulls off an unusual variation. Every bullet impact is shown, often in loving slow motion, but with black powder squibs. The only blood squib used in the film is for a particularly brutal broken arm. This gets slightly surreal when the main character slices a chunk off one of his opponents, which then slide off (again in slow motion) without a trace of the red stuff. Meanwhile, his sword is beaded by a single drop of white fluid.
  • Spoofed in Hot Shots! Part Deux — there was a scene where Charlie Sheen's character, a Rambo parody, shot up dozens and dozens of enemies while a body count was tallied. Not a single drop of blood was even seen onscreen during the faux carnage. But after the tally passed about 100, a caption called the movie "more violent than RoboCop"; after more kills, "more violent than Total Recall (1990)"; and after about 250, called it "the bloodiest movie ever". Not bad for PG-13. Topper does have a record number of kills in that movie. It's actually 103 according to body count lists, and the higher ones came out later.
  • Also spoofed in UHF. During George's Rambo fantasy sequence, he sweeps an automatic rifle along a line of Mooks on a hillside. A moment later, they bloodlessly collapse simultaneously.
    • Another skit from that film was "Conan the Librarian." In this skit, Conan slices a man in half for bringing in overdue books. Unlike most bloodless examples, the insides weren't even red.
  • While The Matrix has some blood, at the end of the first movie we see Agent Smith pump Neo full of lead from his Desert Eagle. The smallest calibre fired is .357 magnum and it can also be chambered in .44 or .50 AE, so a magazine's worth should leave penny-sized holes with severe bleeding to go along with the internal damage, not the tiny wounds and minimal blood loss we see in the scene.
  • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is notable for its conspicuous aversion, which is extremely unusual for the franchise. When rogue Enterprise personnel board a Klingon battlecruiser to assassinate Chancellor Gorkon, several Klingons are hit by phaser fire. Their wounds are shown to bleed profusely.note 
  • In Star Wars, there are many instances of people getting limbs or heads cut off during lightsaber duels, but there is never any blood. This is justified, as lightsaber wounds show visible cauterization from the heat of the blade.
    • The first use of lightsaber by Obi-Wan in Episode IV, however, is quite bloody — there is a whole puddle of blood on the floor of the cantina when Ponda Boba gets his arm cut off. On a meta level, the bleeding arm in Episode IV was a deliberately disturbing shot, along with Beru and Owen's charred skeletons, that were added by George Lucas to Avoid the Dreaded G Rating; in the rest of the series, there is no blood from lightsaber dismemberment at all.
    • Another exception is when Obi-Wan kills Darth Maul in Episode I. There's a quick spray of blood when the cut is made.
    • The short-lived web series, A Clone Apart parodies this, where an inexperienced Clone Trooper (named Danson) is listening to a superior's account that all their training (which Danson never received) never quite prepares you for all the screaming and the blood in the middle of combat. Then the following exchange occurs between him and his best friend, Biff:
      Biff: Don't worry Danson. He's lying.
      Danson: [relieved] Really?
      Biff: There won't be any blood. Laser fire cauterizes the wound. You'll be dead before ya get a chance to bleed.
      [Danson makes distressed noises]
    • Moves into Fridge Horror in the case of decapitation. Cauterization of the wound by a lightsaber traps enough blood in the brain for a victim to survive up to 30 seconds before dying.
  • Speaking of Lucas, the original Indiana Jones movies had a decent amount of blood for non-R Rated films, but as pointed out by Mr Plinkett of RedLetterMedia, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hardly has any onscreen gun violence or death, and the few corpses shown on-screen only have a small strand of blood on the back.
  • Gunshots in the Death Note film are entirely bloodless, despite still killing people. Most noticeable when Naomi commits suicide.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Plenty of people get shot or stabbed in Hellboy, but only two of them bleed: the mountaineer whose blood was used to bring Rasputin back from the dead, and Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, who bled sand. (Guillermo del Toro said on the commentary that he wanted to ensure that onscreen bloodshed was only used in symbolic contexts.) In HB's fight with Sammael, he beats it over the head with a payphone, causing change to fly everywhere, much like blood would. The change standing in for blood in the fight with Sammael was quite intentional so as to avoid the R rating. Ron Perlman originally suggested that Hellboy use a gumball machine. The same is true for the sequel, in which Strauss bleeds ectoplasm.
  • A staple of classic Westerns. Sam Peckinpah made The Wild Bunch so bloody in reaction to this, stating that he wanted to show "what the hell it was like for someone to get shot."
    • Likewise, Spaghetti Westerns. The Dollars Trilogy is violent, but people only bleed after horrible beatings or headshots.
    • Also many early gangster movies — as squibs weren't used to simulate bullet hits until the 1957 film Run of the Arrow, the victims would be seen twitching on the ground without wounds. Such bullet hits (e.g. into nearby walls) were done with live rounds. In one incident, machine-gun fire ricocheted into the place where James Cagney was supposed to be (fortunately he'd refused to stand there, even though it was 'protected' by a bulletproof shield).
      • A prime example for this is the film-within-a-film Angels With Filthy Souls in Home Alone, where Johnny empties a whole Tommygun drum into Snake's body and we only see him twitching on the floor.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • Despite being given more freedom in slicing people up than in the animated adaptations, Wolverine's rampages in the movies were conspicuously devoid of blood. Perhaps most notable is an instance in the first movie where he stabs Rogue in the chest. We're given a very clear close-up of the exit wounds on her back, but even those don't have any blood coming from them. What's more, when she turns around, we see that her shirt isn't even torn. Perhaps absorbing his healing ability extended to her nightshirt? Just the back of her shirt is torn (that's where we see the wounds).
    • This is in full force in X2: X-Men United, where Wolverine slashes, impales, and generally slaughters about a dozen of Stryker's soldiers storming the school, with not a single drop of blood spilled.
    • In X-Men: First Class, there was no blood when Shaw shot Erik's mother. Azazel's massacre of the CIA agents, Shaw's death and Charles getting shot also had either minimal blood or none at all.
    • In The Wolverine, the scores of Mooks that find themselves on the pointy end of Wolverine's claws don't bleed [[note]]Though there's plenty of blood flying around in the "Unleashed" edition. However, Wolverine bleeds though it doesn't mean much since he's Nigh Invulnerable even with his gimped healing factor.
    • There is a surprising lack of blood in X-Men: Days of Future Past, only some of which is justified by the mutants. For example, Iceman gets decapitated and Colossus gets ripped apart, but since they are in their "iced-up" and metal forms respectively when it happens, there is no blood. At the same time, the Sentinels impaling the normal-ish mutants like Blink don't so much as spill a drop, and Mystique gets a bullet through the leg yet walks it off with only a few drops spilled here and there.
  • Though Orcs bleed aplenty, do you remember seeing one ounce of red human, elf, or dwarf blood in the entirety of The Lord of the Rings saga? The aftermath of the battle at Minas Tirith was surprisingly dry. Apart from the odd soldier slumped against a wall with blood in his mouth. Bloody faces and minor wounds appear occasionally in the films, but serious injuries and battles are always bloodless. However, Peter Jackson, delighting in carnage, has gotten around this principle as much as possible, and there are plenty of gruesome sights such as disembodied body parts and rotten-looking ghosts.
  • In the first of the "in the ring" wrestling matches in the lucha film Santo vs. la hija de Frankestein ("Santo vs Frankenstein's Daughter"), the TV announcer talks about how much Santo is bleeding from his opponent's illegal hits. Uh, what blood? (This may have been a case of Stock Footage, as later in the film both Truxon and Ursus are shown bleeding.)
  • The Quick and the Dead — Gene Hackman's evil gunfighter character thinks he won a gunfight with The Lady but looks down to see a neat hole through his chest, with light coming from his back and wind whistling through this gunshot wound that looks more like a clean bloodless tunnel. Pure Sam Raimi silliness. Ironic, from the man who made Evil Dead.
  • The Longest Day manages to show the entire D-Day operation without any blood. In part, this is probably because blood doesn't look good in black-and-white.
  • In Sergeant York, Pusher gets blown up with a grenade and is not only in one piece but completely free of blood.
  • Gettysburg: Gen. Garnett rides towards a cannon as it fires at him and then we see his horse emerge riderless from the smoke. Overall, though, the film does show quite a bit of blood—it doesn't show the hideous carnage caused by cannon fire, but men who are shot onscreen, like Ted Turner's cameo, do bleed visibly. There is blood from wounds, on fallen men, and sometimes on the trees. (Historically, it was reported that blood from the battle made the ground marshy in some places.)
  • Reworkings of R-rated action franchises to PG-13 movies result in this. Cases in point: Live Free or Die Hard (only John McClane bleeds in the wide cut) and Terminator Salvation (since a Terminator is covered in living tissue, damaging him is not pretty; the fourth really tones it down).
  • Oddly enough, the original Halloween (1978). And The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).
  • The Golden Compass. Although people's lack of blood when dying can be attributed to their turning into the mystical dust, when Iorek Byrnison rips the polar bear king's jaw off, there is no blood. It's the killed humans' daemons that turn into golden sparks when killed, not the humans themselves. Ironically, this special effect probably allowed the filmmakers to embrace this trope more fully than usual, because they didn't even need to show anyone's body falling to the ground to confirm that a blow was lethal. If a daemon goes "poof", somebody bit it.
  • The Black Hole: Alex Durant is gored through the chest by Maximillian's high-speed saw-claw, and not a drop of blood is seen. Even Kate, who is standing right next to him as this happens, comes out clean as a whistle.
  • In Salt, there is no blood in the movie, save for when Angelina Jolie's character gets punched in the nose. And then she's just gushing the stuff.
  • In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode The Unearthly, a man is shot point blank, with no blood. This is then lampshaded with, "Wound! We need a wound here!"
  • At the beginning of Woody Allen's early film Bananas, El Presidente is shot several times, point blank, with a big gun, and there's not a drop of blood. There's also firing squad executions where there's not even squibs, let alone blood. According to Allen, he didn't want to ruin the Charlie Chaplin-esque mood of the film with real violence.
  • This happens at the end of Gran Torino when Walt is by shot by a variety of pistols and sub-machine guns. All that is seen is a trickle of blood running down his arm, which is odd considering the movie was going to be R-rated no matter what the content of that scene was.
  • In Scotland, PA, the one scene with blood is when Joe McBeth gets Impaled with Extreme Prejudice. The rest of the violence occurs just off-screen, with nary a blood spatter.
  • Despite being the movie adaptation of one of the Bloodier and Gorier games of its time, Mortal Kombat: The Movie was surprisingly blood-free, even when the characters were stabbed through the chest or knocked into a spike pit.
  • Strangely inconsistent in High Noon, where a fistfight halfway through leaves Kane covered in blood, but those killed in the gunfight at the end just fall over.
  • In Iron Man, dozens of people are killed throughout the film, without any blood splatter whatsoever. Presumably, this was to give it a lower rating.
  • Resident Evil. In the first movie, several characters are sliced into pieces in the Red Queen's Laser Hallway but the only blood seen is a couple drops down the medic's neck. Justified as the laser beams were so hot they cauterized the wounds. It should be noted that the leader who was diced had the focus taken off of him..
  • In John Q., the heart donor who's wheeled into the O.R. for organ harvest looks like she's fresh from the hair salon, not a highway collision sufficient to render anyone brain-dead.
  • Lampshaded by director Stephen Sommers in his commentary on the huge gun battle in The Mummy Returns. In the first movie even though Rick shoots a couple of Ardeth Bay's men at close range on the ship no one bleeds; in fact, the only time anyone bleeds is at the end where Rick has some blood on his mouth and shoulder and Imhotep bleeds from his sword wound.
  • The TMNT movies. Also true in the cartoon, but not so with the comics. Played with in the Original Movie. The big fights between the Foot are bloodless, though the murder of Splinter's master in the backstory features blood spatter, and Shredder bleeds from wounds inflicted by Leonardo in the final fight.
  • Mystery Team. Most of the carnage is implied, culminating in:
    Police Officer: Someone stole that man's face!
  • Django was banned in several countries because of a scene where someone's ear is cut off in full, bloody detail. Despite this, the gun battles are completely bloodless, even when people are riddled with dozens of bullets. Only one person killed by a gun bleeds, and he bleeds out his mouth instead of from his wound. This trope was averted in Tarantino's homage.
  • The film version of Eragon avoided a PG-13 for having "ample yet bloodless violence". Despite a major battle scene, many deaths of allies, and an onscreen stabbing, no blood is shown anywhere.
  • Harry Potter: Played straight as spells don't leave bullet holes, but averted for effect on two occasions; in the Half-Blood Prince when Harry uses the Sectumsempra curse on Malfoy, and in Deathly Hallows, Part II Voldemort walks across a floor strewn with blood and the bodies of the guards and goblins who let Harry steal his Horcrux from Gringotts. The most notable example is in Goblet of Fire when Wormtail severs his own hand with a knife. Whereas, in the book, his robes end up "shining with blood", there is not a drop to be seen in the film.
  • The Slasher Movie Bloody Murder, ironically enough.
  • When Fegelein is shot dead in Downfall, no blood is shown at all, though the rest of the movie has lots and lots of blood.
  • In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Gideon's Mooks bleed coins as Scott cuts them apart. Then, when Gideon impales Scott, there is no blood or coins.
  • In Universal Soldier: The Return, no one bleeds when they were shot. Well, except Romeo and one UniSol. The rest of the series, especially Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, were awash with blood and gore.
  • Despite a body count the size of a small town, you can count on one hand how many times you see blood in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
  • Battlefield Earth: The film is clean of blood, despite limbs and head being blown off of both Psychlos and humans.
  • In Star Trek Into Darkness Harrison's hands and clothes are surprisingly clean for someone who just popped a man's head like a tomato. Damn you, PG-13 rating!!
  • In the TRON franchise, Programs fade from existence when they de-rez. Fatal wounds shatter them like safety glass, leaving decaying voxels behind. Wounds look like pieces carved out of their bodies and scars are like dead pixels on an LCD screen. The fact humans bleed and Programs do not become a big plot point in TRON: Legacy Of course, Disney used this for flying a metric ton of crap past the radar including gladiatorial combat, gaping head wounds, mass murder scenes, Cold-Blooded Torture, and an entire a first-person shooter.
  • Kingsman: The Secret Service is not completely bloodless, but anything worse than a gunshot wound is remarkably clean. Most notably, when Lancelot is cleaved into two lengthwise, it does not result in a single drop of blood. Meanwhile, the head-exploding implants result in a burst of all sorts of goop, but little actual blood. And when the final scene with all of the headless people lying on the ground comes around, the blood from their bodies is not even spilled all over the floor.
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit contains two examples, first at the crime scene of Marvin Acme's murder there is no blood under the safe where his head was crushed, and R.K. Maroon is shot twice in the back leaving visible bullet holes and when we see his corpse after the killer has fled he is positioned in a way where his blood should be dripping on the floor but it doesn't.
  • In the Angels With Filthy Souls in-movies found in the Home Alone series, Johnny the gangster uses his Tommy Gun liberally on pretty much anyone who pisses him off, usually at point-blank range. No blood whatsoever, when in reality the person would pretty much be shredded and you'd need a mop for the clean-up.
  • In Pixels, everything the aliens destroy turns into pixels, handily avoiding any bloodspill.
  • In Hussar Ballad a lot of minor characters get killed in action, yet almost no blood appears on-screen. The only exception is a blood-stained letter that Shura takes from a wounded messenger and delivers herself; this blood is a minor plot point.
  • Rampage: Though not completely bloodless, the injuries Bill inflicts result in much less blood than is realistic.
  • A Fish Called Wanda accomplishes the untimely violent deaths of several dogs rather bloodlessly. Originally, there were plans to make them look realistically bloody until it was realized that it would make audiences stop laughing at what already was a very dark comedy.
  • Wonder Woman (2017): Clever use of Gory Discretion Shot keeps much of the blood off-camera, but there is some war-appropriate evidence of violence (a soldier's legs are blown off). However, when Steve sees Diana's sword sticking through the ceiling after plunging it through Ludendorff's heart it's bizarrely clean.
  • In Hook there are a few instances of this a few pirates are shot, Peter and Rufio kill at least two pirates each, and later Rufio is fatally stabbed by Captain Hook all with no visible bloodshed, although some blood is seen when Hook slashes Peter's arm with his hook.
  • Dunkirk has received harsh criticism for using this trope, although makeup photographs of the soldiers and the character George receiving a bloody forehead have proven otherwise.
  • Black Panther (2018): For all the bladed weapons used by the characters, nobody bleeds outside of T'Challa's duels with M'Baku and Killmonger. Most notably, Killmonger slits the throat of a Dora Milaje with no Gory Discretion Shot and her body just falls down without a drop of blood.
  • Plenty of people are fatally shot in Rancho Notorious, but the only time blood is seen on the screen is when Frenchy is wounded in the shoulder.
  • Played for Laughs in The Happytime Murders; the movie never pretends the puppets are anything other than puppets, so when they’re murdered or injured, the “gore” consists of stuffing and shreds of fabric. The characters still respond to it as a real person would to blood and gore, leading to scenes like a cop wringing the water out of a wet puppet being portrayed like something out of a horror movie.
  • Venom (2018) avoids showing blood even when characters have lacerations and compound fractures from being hit by a car, get their heads bitten off, die by Flechette Storm, or are Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.
  • Dave Made a Maze: Several characters get dismembered or impaled while inside the maze, but not a drop of blood is actually shed since apparently everyone's insides have been converted to cardboard.
  • No blood appears on any of the characters who get shot in Assault on a Queen.

  • From Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
    Dorothy screamed and expected to see a terrible sight; but as the two halves of the Sorcerer fell apart on the floor she saw that he had no bones or blood inside of him at all and that the place where he was cut looked much like a sliced turnip or potato.
  • Justified in Sword Art Online due to being set inside a video game. The avatars don't bleed because they have no blood. Plenty of people die, though, and when that happens, they shatter and Disappear Into Light.
  • Brandon Sanderson:
    • One of the creepier properties of Shardblades in The Stormlight Archive. Since Shardblades don't cut living flesh, instead severing the soul and burning out all the nerves below the "cut" (or all the nerves in the body if you hit the head or spine), there is no blood from the use of the things. Though in some cases people have to cut through a pile of corpses to get them out of the way, which does result in some blood leaking out.
    • A necessity in Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. When shedding even a single drop of blood in anger will enrage every shade in the vicinity, people learn to kill without drawing blood fast.
  • In Shadow of the Conqueror, this is Downplayed given the nature of the medium making it such that the author normally wouldn't need to clarify the fact that wounds bleed—but there is one notable exception. Daylen at one point catches a man in the act of raping a little girl (revealed immediately after to be the man's own daughter), and so magically enhances his strength in order to perform a barehanded castration on the prick. Given the nature of the scene and the fact that erection in humans is achieved by inflating the penis with blood, one would expect a grisly and detailed description of High-Pressure Blood. In fact, no blood is mentioned at all.

    Live-Action TV 
  • While Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't shy about showing violence and the resulting aftermath, the Night-Night guns and ICE Rs allow the characters to engage in gunplay while keeping the body count low since targets are knocked out, rather than outright killed.
  • The A-Team. While a little blood showed here and there, the series was infamous for inflicting the most extreme mayhem on bad guys... who always crawled away a bit shaken.
  • The Avengers actually made a point of not showing blood, to maintain the lighthearted tone of the series, despite numerous deaths by gunshot, stabbing, explosion and so on. There were some episodes where a little blood was shown, but they were few and far between. In one episode, we are led to believe a character was mauled to death by a tiger; the victim's clothes are in shreds, but there's no blood at all.
  • In the final episode of Blake's 7 this trope was used so the producers could bring the characters back to life if the series was renewed for another season (which had already happened once), by saying that Stun Guns had been used. Except for one actor who insisted he be Killed Off for Real, and so suffered an appropriately bloody death-by-exploding-squibs+bloodbag.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • The show is surprisingly bloodless for a series where people die on-camera every episode, often for vampire-related reasons (which generally involve, well, blood). Especially egregious are a scene in the first season where a person is eaten alive with no blood spilled, and another in the second where someone bleeds to death bloodlessly.
    • The whole "vampires neatly go poof into dust when staked through the heart" thing was done in part so the cute blonde heroine wouldn't be leaving a trail of bloody corpses wherever she went.
    • There are some aversions, i.e. "Your shirt..." This was season 6.
    • The 1992 movie on which the series was based has very, very little blood - and even when it appears, it doesn't seem to make much sense.
    • There are a few plain old slit throats - but very little red.
  • The Community paintball episodes also employ the humorous mock-carnage variant.
  • Decoy didn't contain much gun violence, but when characters did get shot, they never had any visible injuries.
  • Ubiquitous in Doctor Who, even when they're using real guns. It is for children, after all.
    • Averted from seasons 11-16. All sorts of nastiness from impalements to decapitations, graphic gunshot wounds and even the gruesome aftermaths of dinosaur and killer robot attacks were shown with brutal, gory detail. This did make its still occasional use of this more noticeable:
      • "Pyramids of Mars" has an interesting example where a cultist gets murdered by a Humanoid Abomination that literally boils his head with super-heated hands. No blood... but lots and lots of smoke, meaning it still seems extremely painful and disturbing.
      • "The Seeds of Doom" features a compost machine that the villain uses to grind up bodies. After the villain falls into it, we see a closeup of its churning blades while we hear his bloodcurdling scream... but not a drop of blood.
    • "The Christmas Invasion", when the Sycorax Leader cuts the Doctor's hand off during a sword fight. One would think that losing a hand would cause at least SOME blood loss, but nope. The 2018 novelization lampshades it by having Rose wonder if the Doctor ever bleeds.
    • "Last of the Time Lords":
      • Jack has been tortured to death repeatedly by the Master for a year and is at one point gunned down by a squad of soldiers, but his clothes don't have a drop of blood on them.
      • When the Master is fatally shot, no blood is visible. By Word of God, there was a little bit of blood on his shirt, but John Simm's hand "accidentally" covered it up.
    • "The Unicorn and the Wasp" has one of the worst examples in the new series: a woman gets crushed with a gargoyle, and when we see her she is entirely intact with only a small trickle of blood coming from her mouth, and still able to give some Last Words. It is a light-hearted Agatha Christie-themed episode, so significant bloodshed would be inappropriate.
  • Emergency!: The producers had to abide by a "no blood" rule to get the series greenlighted, so even injuries where you'd expect some level of blood had very little to none.
  • Both Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess were both usually bloodless. With Hercules, it usually made sense, given that he had a strict view on Thou Shalt Not Kill. Still, it can be jarring with the constant sword fights and random mooks that get stabbed and slashed. If someone bled, it was usually for drama. Even with Xena, who had no such qualms about killing her enemies, she rarely ever got blood on her sword.
  • Highlander to a point. Sure, we'd see sword cuts in the flesh and some blood when someone was injured, but at no time did we ever see the bloody mess you'd really have with a beheading. Of course, the beheadings themselves were never shown, but the victor usually came away with very little blood spatter on them.
  • Another toku example is Kamen Rider 555. 555 is an Anyone Can Die series where the monsters' method of operation involves outright killing civilians onscreen until found and dealt with. However, those killed by Orphenochs simply turn to dust. Orphenochs do the same upon eating Rider Kicks but with an explosion. Impalement is shown via X-ray-ish scenes similar to Romeo Must Die, and never is any blood left on the weapon. It's got an astonishingly high body count given that it never shows any victims bleeding. (Now, there's a little blood if you get punched in the face, maybe.) Decade has every single rider shown killed in a vision simultaneously, yet there is not one drop of blood. However, there is a somewhat small reason behind it. It is entirely possible that they all bled when they died, but we couldn't see it through the suits. In the Rider War World, they seem to be vaporized.
  • Kingdom Adventure: Despite the Prince being struck on the neck with a sword in one episode and Dagger being shot in the backside with an arrow in another, there's no blood.
  • In Legend of the Seeker, almost every episode includes Richard and Kahlan fighting and killing Darken Rahl's soldiers, but while blood is sometimes shown on the blades afterward, little if any blood seems to be gushing from wounds during battle. Then again, when people get their throats cut, there's plenty of blood gushing from the wounds.
  • In "The Assassin", an episode of MacGyver (1985), a woman gets stabbed by an assassin and has no blood on her whatsoever. This kind of thing seems to happen in most episodes where someone is shot or stabbed. People die within seconds without doing much bleeding.
  • Merlin never depicts any blood. It either cuts away or just plain doesn't show any, even in instances where there would logically BE blood (e.g. a sword fight). There are a few exceptions to this - in "The Beginning of the End", Mordred is shown bleeding after being wounded, and Arthur's blood has been shown every time he's been injured.
  • In an episode of Miami Vice entitled "Definitely Miami", Crockett and Zito open fire on Ted Nugent (that episode's Big Bad) after he attempts to lure Crockett to his death. Despite the fact that both of them are firing several rounds from two different angles, and with Crockett standing up and unloading his entire cartridge into Nugent, there are no bullet wounds or blood stains of any kind! Amazing!
    • Nearly every shoot-out is like this. For all the gunfights that happened and all the bad guys falling over dead, there were few bullet holes and almost no blood. Reportedly, there was little in the budget for effects like squibs. For scenes that needed blood, they would do a quick edit between an unstained shirt to a stained one.
  • Best example: Power Rangers — out of nearly 800 episodes, only one had blood, and then only three drops.
    • It's now up to two!
    • Three if we count alien blood. Tyzonn gets wounded when we first meet him.
    • Four, actually. In Power Rangers Time Force, Eric is shot while unmorphed, and he is later seen with a bloody bandage covering the wound.
  • There is surprisingly very little blood on the BBC's Robin Hood, sometimes to the point of distraction. The most notable example is when Maid Marian is run through with a sword and spends the next ten minutes presumably bleeding to death, all without spilling one visible drop of blood or even growing pale. She even wrenches the sword from her own belly, yet again without any blood, which should be clearly visible considering she's wearing a white dress.
  • There is never any blood visible in Robin of Sherwood, no matter how horrific the wounds which should be inflicted. Usually, they used the standard "chop in the stomach while the victim's back is to the camera" technique, but missed it in an episode where Robin was fighting the Flemish mercenaries who killed Will's wife. It's a bit surprising to see the main villain keel over dead after having a sword dragged across his belt, clearly not cutting anything.
  • It's never shown in Sesame Street but the canonical handwave for Rosita turning from a fruit bat into a generic Monster is that she was flying through a windy cave and her wing flaps fell off. She never even felt it.
  • In an episode of The Return of Sherlock Holmes, a victim is shown being stabbed. However, the camera forgot to cut away before the stage knife was pulled out, showing no blood at all.
  • Spaced included a particularly amusing example of the second variation, a paintballing sequence played like a gritty war film. And also included this amusing gunfight with which produced little blood (except the spurting at 44s).
  • In an episode of the tokusatsu version of Spider-Man, Amazoness and her mooks shoot up a bunch of men with guns. Yet, no blood or bullet wounds or anything else that would come with shooting happens. They just fall down.
  • In Starsky & Hutch, people almost never bleed no matter how badly injured they are. When Starsky is shot three times in the back in the Series Finale, he does bleed, but a lot less than would be realistic.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - particularly after the arrival of Worf - featured bat'leth and mek'leth combat on a regular basis. Apparently, slamming the blade into the armoured belly of a charging Klingon bezerker is instantly fatal - but bloodless.
    • Phaser-fire in the Star Trek universe in general. Stun leaves no marks, kill leaves a small burn at the point of impact, maximum setting leaves a second of glowiness and then nothing. No blood from the series' many shootouts. Explosive Instrumentation is much less likely to leave your Red Shirt looking like he's just napping, occasionally averted with impressively nasty burn makeup. Non-disintegrating kill shots were also treated inconsistently, ranging all the way from fairly impressive pyrotechnics(without blood) to the standard invisible wound. In "The Magnificent Ferengi", we see someone get shot with the latter (lack of) effect, but then see an unmissable burn when his body appears later.
    • Lampshaded in a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode where Nog, watching an old cowboy show on the holodeck wonders why there is no bleeding after a cowboy gets shot in the arm.
  • The Tomorrow People (1973): In "The Revenge of Jedekiah", John and Elizabeth are gunned down by soldiers with fully automatic assault rifles. Not only do they (barely) manage to survive their injuries, but when we see them sprawled on the floor, there isn't a trace of blood.
  • Top Gear created a spoof Title Sequence for The Intercepters, a non-existent Seventies action show. In one scene James May empties a submachine gun into a villain wearing a white suit and trousers. Instead of bullet squibs and White Shirt of Death, the villain clutches his unmarked chest and writhes unconvincingly.
  • An episode of Touched by an Angel featured several flashbacks to a blood-free crime scene. All the while, the character who was recalling it was whimpering, "There was so much blood!"
  • Wolf Hall cuts away from the actual moment of Sir Thomas More's beheading. The goriest it gets is the aftermath of Anne Boleyn's execution when her handmaidens have blood on their hands and skirts from lifting her head and body into the coffin.
  • Wonder Woman: The show went to great lengths to keep the violence PG rated. Wonder Woman crashed cars with Mooks in them, blew up a submarine, hit bad guys with a razor-sharp tiara, fought a gorilla, fought her way out of a Nazi prison, and caught bullets all without spilling a drop of blood. In "Wonder Woman in Hollywood", she even convinced Steve Trevor and Wonder Girl that she'd been shot despite the lack of blood!
  • Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: "Trenches of Hell" features a depiction of the battle of the Somme in WWI where, despite mortars falling all over the battlefield over soldiers, there's not a single drop of blood seen.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Enforced in CMLL, which has long refused to air matches where blood is spilled without editing the blood out first. This did not stop Mexico City mayor, Lic. Ernesto Uruchurtu, from banning televised professional wrestling matches during his term. Luckily for CMLL, magazines were the primary lucha libre media anyway and they were much less averse to blood, though getting back on TV lead to a business boom for them.
  • When the entire WWE decided to go rated PG, it also decided to stop any match where anyone bled in order to close them back up with medical tape. While backlash from the fans put a stop to this practice, spots intentionally set up to make a wrestler bleed now range from discouraged to banned outright. Later, WWE started applying medical glue to cuts during the downtime of matches that lend themselves to them, such as iron man matches. Fans and wrestlers still didn't like it, but it was much better received than previous measure, being much rarer and not as damaging to the flow of the bouts.

    Theme Parks 

    Video Games 
  • Most games with elemental spells or powers. Fire/frost/lightning is commonplace but few games depict enemies realistically burning to death, getting electrocuted or turning into a fleshy pulp after the water in their cells freezes into sharp ice needles. The first electric chair executions were far from clean, up to and including heads on fire, and they were trying to implement this trope.
  • The Final Fantasy series as a whole largely practices this trope:
    • Final Fantasy VII is full of battle scenes with combatants being attacked with enormous swords and machine guns and the like, with no blood. Outside of gameplay and in related works, it's also often the case, but varies. It really could just be down to the graphics. I mean, try rendering 3D blood in cut-scene with technology like that back then?
      • A symbolic point in the original game was that, when Sephiroth stabs Aeris, there's no blood on the blade. However, when Cloud kills Sephiroth at the end, blood is pouring down his face. Then again, Cloud had had just cut Sephiroth fifteen times straight through the body with a sword the size of a man — a faceful of blood is nothing compared the small bloody chunks which should logically have ensued.
      • And yet, earlier in the game, you were in a building with bloodstains (including in the battle background) and see a giant, gruesomely impaled snake. Apparently, standards weren't quite as asinine back then.
      • This is also partially justified by Sephiroth's Masamune (supposedly) being so sharp that it cannot draw blood. The bloodstains and snake could be explained by having Sephiroth cut up the victims, so blood would flow naturally out of the chopped bodies and the snake was impaled on a tree.
      • In Final Fantasy VII's Compilation, in the various depictions of the game's backstory, Cloud stabs Sephiroth straight through the back with a sword wider than his torso with no sign of blood or even a wound (!), and Sephiroth impales and hefts Cloud on his own sword, again with no blood. Yet, Crisis Core ends with Zack dying in an appropriately copious pool of blood after having been pumped full of enough lead to kill Godzilla. Despite the rest of the game unrepentantly embracing this trope. My head hurts now.
      • Cloud's many battles in Advent Children involve villains being clouted with his BFS repeatedly without any visible damage, despite said weaponry cutting off pieces of skyscrapers, and the only blood in the entire film is a tiny trickle when Cloud is shot in the face at point-blank, which simply knocks off his sunglasses. Made of Iron indeed. At the climax of Advent Children, Cloud cuts Sephiroth right through repeatedly with a new version of Omnislash, leaving no marks and only drawing dark smoke instead of blood, which could be justified by Sephiroth being a Humanoid Abomination. Soon after, Cloud gets shot through the stomach, but all he does is stumble forward. The Blu-Ray director's cut fixes some of this, adding bruises to skin and letting plenty of blood flow during Sephiroth's stabbing sessions (which this version has more of).
    • Final Fantasy VIII too has largely bloodless carnage as well, except for the opening battle, where Squall gets a huge bloody scar ripped across the front of his face.
    • Final Fantasy IX doesn't feature bloodshed, even in the grim aftermath of the sacking of several cities in the first one-and-a-half discs. The Alexandrian soldiers involved mostly used fire, so all the wounds would be cauterized as soon as they were made.
    • Final Fantasy X follows in suit with the rest of the series. No matter who gets stabbed, shot or blown up, blood is never seen. Justified in a few cases, as the victims are fiends or Unsent - creatures that don't actually have physical bodies.
    • Final Fantasy XIII has cutscenes where people are pumped full of machine gun bullets and don't bleed. Occasionally, they don't even get that badly hurt, in a rare gameplay and story integration of Guns Are Worthless. Like VII and VIII, the game averts this at one point: After the party defeats Rosch a second time, he has blood all over his face.
      • Most of the Mooks that get shot are wearing armor. It could be partly justified.
    • Dissidia Final Fantasy has characters who take hundreds of blows from their enemy, yet they look perfectly fine.
    • Final Fantasy Tactics both plays this straight in gameplay and averts it in cutscenes.
    • Final Fantasy XIV never has any blood drawn, even during cutscenes where you can see someone clearly being slashed with a sword axe; the victims simply fall over dead.
  • Kingdom Hearts, full stop. It's got a sword-like key that can slice clear through buildings and yet not draw a drop from the more flesh-and-blood enemies, among the other weapons and attacks to those same targets. Otherwise, however, it's justified in that the majority of enemies you face throughout the games are The Heartless, which presumably have no blood. Subverted a few times in the manga, as a few characters are shown to bleed, though this almost never happens to the main characters.
  • The stabbing scene in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance — "Is this… all there is? No challenge? No resistance?" No blood?? All Fire Emblem games do this, despite the massive melees between characters who almost all use edged weapons. Early games could accredit this to technical limitations. The later ones, however, were probably primarily to keep the rating down and maintain the tone of the game, which is not realistic at all in the first place. Subverted in The Binding Blade - Hector's portrait is shown with blood after his fight with Narshen and Brenya.
    • Another particularly egregious example is Ryoma's suicide in Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest. Apparently, not a single drop of blood was spilled when he committed seppuku with an electrified sword, nor was there any visible blood on the Raijinto itself.
  • The Ace Attorney games frequently give you crime scene photos, and they are always a lot less bloody than you might expect.
    • Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney features two of the most extreme examples: in case 3, a man is shot in the shoulder by a .45-caliber weapon and left to eventually die of blood loss. You are actually the first to find him at the scene and get to hear his last words. The Hand Cannon sort of mussed-up the shoulder area of his suit a little, and the "pool of blood" he's lying in is more like a puddle. In case 4, a man is shot right in the forehead at point blank range. The crime scene photo looks like he's sleeping, only there's a hole in his forehead about the size of a quarter, out of which is leaking about as much blood as what one would expect from a shaving accident. Judging from the pillows behind him, there doesn't appear to be an exit wound at all.
    • Bludgeoning wounds are one of the most common causes of death and one never sees a spot of blood or caved in skull.
  • While the purposefully cartoonish and low-detail graphics may have something to do with it, the deaths in Ghost Trick are extremely clean. You never see any bleeding from gunshots or crushed bones from having something heavy fall on them. Cabanela's death in particular, since between the explosion that leaves him nearly incapacitated and being shot in the chest (or the Nonstandard Game Over if you swap the hard hat and smash in his face), you'd think he'd at least get a stain or two on that white coat.
    • Another instance that is flagrant in hindsight: early in the game, the main characters come across a black cat, but don't notice anything odd about it. At the end, it's established that the cat had been shot dead less than an hour beforehand. This fact is vital to The Reveal. Well, Sissel did say that he'd prefer a black coat to a white one because it wouldn't show the stains.
  • The SoulCalibur games are defined by a bunch of people hitting each other with really sharp/big/painful weapons, yet during battle, no one bleeds, bruises, or even gets cut. People must have been stronger back in Ye Olde Middle Ages. Although large amounts of shiny, fluorescent…energy does seem to explode out of a fighter when they get hit. Soul Calibur IV probably alleviates this issue a bit by letting the armor take the damage (though the intent was most likely for Fanservice).
  • Enforced in Five Nights at Freddy's and the sequel. Even in the former's Game Over screen, which depict the poor hero's eyes popping out of a Freddy costume, is clean of blood. Averted in Five Nights at Freddy's 3: The final cutscene shows the demise of the child murderer: getting punctured by a faulty spring-trap suit, with blood spraying everywhere. Thankfully, the cutscenes in this game are all done in the style of old Atari games, so the effect is diminished a bit.
  • In City of Heroes and City of Villains, no matter how much you sliced an enemy up, or punched, or shot, or made them catch on fire, or froze, they won't have any slashes, bruises, burns or have ice on their body. That's because no one is ever killed in COH / COV - they are "defeated" (and presumably teleported away to justice and/or the hospital). It is, after all, T-rated. In fairness, the game never explicitly says what happens one way or the other, meaning you can decide if you have hero who just lets the medicom take over, (Or in the case of villains, one supposes just kidnaps them and uses them as hostages/leaves them in Bond-Villain deathtraps) or if they're... Darker and Edgier, shall we say. This might be allowable with the Super Strength or Energy Blast powersets, but becomes particularly egregious when one is using katanas or fireballs.
  • Lampshaded hilariously in Mercenaries. If a certain mission is failed (i.e. The building with the VIP inside is turned into smoldering rubble), the VIP will exclaim with his dying words: "I'm dying...not bleeding...stupid T rating."
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Significantly Downplayed in that the series has long had a "blood splash" effect when a character is hit, but the blood doesn't persist. Similarly, no matter how they are killed, corpses will not have a single wound on them.
    • Starting with Oblivion, arrows will persist for a time after the battle. However, the character won't bleed, and even dozens of arrows which make the character look like a pincushion won't cause further damage or hamper movement in the slightest.
  • Everybody of demonic origin (including the protagonist) in Devil May Cry officially has the power of "regenerates so fast wounds don't show up", although blood is seen on cutscenes. The regeneration is limited — possibly the only example of Hit Points explained in-world.
    • Or is made of non organic materials. Onimusha is also somewhat guilty of this with the demons being mostly dark aura.
    • Despite taking a bullet between the eyes at point-blank range in Devil May Cry 4, Sanctus really has nothing to show for it. Well, he was dead for a while. He was just reborn later in the game as an Angel, supposedly.
    • Supposedly, the Red Orbs are demon blood that crystallizes the second it hits air. Some attacks also cause Dante to visibly spurt blood for a brief moment.
  • Most Japanese light gun games are bloodless. Even the iconic House of the Dead 4 wasn't that bloody.
    • 1 had plenty of gore that was held back only by hardware limitations. 2 was an absolute splatterfest, arguably the goriest arcade game ever. 3 toned it down considerably. For 4, Sega apparently wised up to the fact that creating the image of chaos and bloodshed was more important than gore flying all over (plus it made a lot of the enemies a total pain to kill), so while the city is pretty gruesome, you're no longer painting it red.
    • GHOST Squad is particularly guilty of this. In one part late in the game, a knife fight ensues. If the player wins, he is shown bloodlessly slitting his opponent's throat with gusto.
    • The headshot at the end of the second mission only causes Disney Villain Death.
  • Would you believe Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is less graphic than the original MK? On consoles that have the processing power to handle real-time gore, there is never any visible sign of damage. Even the fatalities are mostly bloodless. Interestingly, even in the goriest game of the series, Mortal Kombat 9, the Story Mode not only doesn't allow finishing moves (since killing people would create quite a few paradoxes with the cutscenes immediately after) but the battle scars that fighters accumulate in the other modes do not appear. The fighters finish the fights as dapper as when the first round started (and yet the viciously brutal X-Ray attacks are still available to the challengers). The REST of the game, on the other hand...
  • In the N64 game WinBack, hits on enemies were indicated by green flashes, or a red flash if you scored a headshot (which could kind of look like blood sometimes). Dead enemies would flash on and off and vanish after hitting the floor. It became especially ridiculous during cutscenes — in one you meet a dying member of your squad who claims to be "just resting." The main character replies "In a pool of blood!?" despite the surroundings being spotless. In another scene an unfortunate civilian, shot by the terrorists, dies after helping you...and flashes on and off and disappears, during the cutscene.
  • Gears of War 2, a notoriously bloody game, features a censored mode where all blood is replaced by showers of sparks. But not rainbows and confetti.
  • Many games ported to the NES and SES suffered from this in the pre-ESRB days; Mortal Kombat on the SNES is a notorious example.
  • This tends to be a trend for the Tales Series in general. If there's any blood, it typically shows up only in the animated cutscenes, and only in the especially dramatic ones (such as the deaths of Asch and Alexei).
    • Despite all the sharp weapons and other implements flying around in Tales of Symphonia and its sequel, the one time blood shows up in either game is in Derris-Kharlan, at the scene of The Judged. Lloyd is invisible to two of the characters in the party, and must prove to them that he is not an illusion. He wounds himself, and his blood, now visible, proves he is there. The OVA, on the other hand, is quite violent.
    • In Tales of Graces, Richard's descent into insanity is punctuated by him repeatedly slashing an enemy soldier even after the guard is clearly dead. The characters comment on how violent and bloody it was, but the player never sees a drop of blood on-screen.
    • Tales of Xillia 2 however, while still retaining the trope in battle (outside of the new Bleed status ailment), subverts it much more frequently then other games in the series, in line with its Darker and Edgier nature. In the "Bad Ending" in particular, main character Ludger's twin swords are shown to be covered in blood.
    • Tales of Berseria averts this trope. Main character Velvet gets splattered with blood quite frequently, and characters who die by impalement or cutting show very large bloodstains where they were hurt, complete with gouged flesh.
  • The Super Smash Bros. series has some characters that use swords, guns, and explosives, yet no visible signs of any kind of damage appear, as the characters are Living Toys. This is averted with Master Hand though, as when he is blasted by Tabuu, bloody scrapes are clearly seen on it.
  • The Force Unleashed, left and right. Your character has a lightsaber. No matter how hard you swing it, it doesn't even leave a mark on the wall, much less actual enemies- particularly strange when one considers one of the selling points of the game on higher-end consoles was realistic physics and material simulation, such as, say... destructible environments. Maybe he just set his saber to stun. For fun, compare with the Jedi Knight series from Jedi Outcast onwards. Your lightsaber leaves a mark, even when idling and just scratching the wall. It disappears after a while though, but the effect lingers for longer than… oh say... the 2 seconds of what you get in TFU. Justified, as it has been stated that the lightsaber cauterizes the wound.
  • Ace Combat series, as human combatants are almost never visible.
    • Averted in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, in a scene near the end where Markov betrays the other conspirators. Played straight in other scenes and gameplay. In Japan the game itself warranted a higher rating, CERO C, compared to CERO A (All Ages) of the other games.
    • Averted in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown prologue sequence where the Scrap Queen crashed. She survives though. And the game is, in Japan, rated CERO A (All Ages).
  • Air Force Delta Strike in the same vein.
  • Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII has a pretty bad instance of this, besides the spotless corpses that litter various warzones: Rosso the Crimson buries her hand up to the wrist in Vincent's chest, and yet there's not a drop of blood, when, ratings be damned, it should have been fountaining from the wound. It follows up with a case of Alien Blood, in which Vincent impales Azul. Once again, there's no blood from the wound, although he does cough up a few drops of something...purple...? Are only good guys and Sephiroth allowed to have red blood in these games?
  • In the Touhou series, even when coming into contact with many many sharp knives or a legendary katana that can cut through anything doesn't yield a drop of blood or even a scratch.
    • May be justified with the sharp knives in question, which may or may not be magic bullets shaped as knives. Also, you can't really expect damage to show up on such a small sprite, and red things fly everywhere anyways, so who's complaining?
  • Justified by the story in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The first human enemies you face do bleed, albeit rather subtly. Once the Prince unleashes the Sands of Time, Azad's citizens become zombified, and thus all of their bodily fluids have been "dehydrated" by the Sands of Time. In Warrior Within (which was Rated M for Money, after all) and The Two Thrones the Sand Monsters bleed, though they are Sand-ified Super Soldiers rather than accidental Zombie Apocalypse victims.
  • The Lego Adaptation Games have characters breaking into Lego pieces upon death, and getting better immediately afterward.
  • TimeSplitters maintained this for the most part in the first two installments of the series, at least during gameplay, which makes the Bloodier and Gorier third game (which also introduced the Inflator) all the more jarring.
  • The Dynasty Warriors/Samurai Warriors/Warriors Orochi series use this trope very heavily, except in a handful of cutscenes.
    • This trope is present in the actual gameplay as well. The game focuses around hacking and slashing through large hordes of enemies at a time, with body counts at the end of missions reaching at least 1000. However, when your character attacks enemies, there are no visible wounds or injuries that appear, and no blood is shed. This is done most likely for technical and practical reasons, as adding realistic bloodshed/injuries to the dozens of enemies being slain at once would clutter the screen and put stress on the hardware.
      • This is somewhat subverted in Warriors: Legends of Troy, as well as the Fist of the North Star and Berserk crossover titles, as blood and gore are heavily present in their source materials. Berserk even goes so far as to include dismemberment for human and non-human enemies alike.
      • While the enemies from Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers do not appear to bleed at all, black blood spatters seem to appear on screen when you build your combo up, and there's a scene in the first trailer of Joker ripping an enemy's mask off, which leads to red goo splattering from its face like in the main game. Nobody actually dies in the game save for a few off screen deaths that occured in the past, however.
  • Normally, Left 4 Dead 2 averts this trope. However, because of a bug in the new game mode Chainsaw Massacre, it's possible for the game to stop rendering blood entirely, so the Infected are torn apart like Play-Doh dolls.
    • Before rating changes that added the AO (Adults Only) category, the Australian release removed blood and gore entirely, due to video game censorship laws over there. Now it's back.
  • Aversion with Lampshade Hanging in Blood Rayne 2:
    Rayne: You saw the blades, what did you think was going to happen?
  • Red Steel 2 is made of this. You stab, slash, shoot, one move has you grab a downed enemy and smash their head into the ground killing them instantly. All without a drop of blood. There IS a liquid that pours out of them, particularly visible with the finishing move to the chest. It's yellowish, however, so it could be censored blood or something else entirely.
  • In Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2: The Siege of Spinner Cay, when Morgan LeFlay slices off Guybrush's pox-infected hand for the Marquis De Singe, Guybrush screams in pain and covers up his wrist stump, but no blood spurts out from his stump. Weird!
    • It gets even weirder in Chapter 4 of the same game, when Guybrush finds Morgan fatally stabbed in the chest by her own Blade of Dragotta, and yet there's no blood on her body, inside or out, at all (even though he later claims that she was "coughing up a lot of blood at the time"). And after she dies, he sadly takes the blade from her chest; that blade, surprisingly, has no blood on it or anywhere else in De Singe's lab at all (even though De Singe later claims that "There was blood all over the floor instead of being packed neatly in vials where it belongs!")!
      • During the De Singe confrontation scene, when the mad doctor tries sedating Elaine, she stabs him in the chest before he laughs maniacally and says, "Behold the power of the Jus de Vie!" She then pulls her sword and his chest wound glows... although no blood is shown on his chest OR on her sword.
    • And near the end of the same chapter, when LeChuck fatally stabs Guybrush in the chest with the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu, there's no blood on the cutlass' blade, or on either side of Guybrush's body or clothes, or anywhere else in the Flotsam Island Jungle, from his being tossed onto an encased wind idol up until his death.
  • While The Legend of Zelda series frequently plays this trope straight, after the final battle of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Ganondorf coughs blood at the camera and then collapses. After he falls, his red cape falls through his body and spreads out on the ground, looking suspiciously like a large pool of blood. But only in the first releases of that game: in later versions, the blood is recolored green. Exaggerated at the end of The Wind Waker, in which Ganondorf doesn't shed so much as a drop when Link drives the Master Sword into his skull. The closest the series has gotten to averting this trope is in Breath of the Wild, where the Blight Ganons explode in fountains of liquid Malice upon defeat. It still isn't proper blood, though, and every other enemy dies bloodlessly.
  • Naval Ops: Warship Gunner 2 justifies it in the fact that you're throwing extremely large caliber artillery, lasers, missiles, Gatling gunfire, and Pulse Cannons in spades!! Oh, and it's ship-to-ship combat.
  • The first villain in Tsukihime wiped out a whole hotel full of victims and left no trace behind. This is not for Bowdlerising purpose, said villain is so blood-thirsty to the point of decanting every last drop of blood and flesh in his reach. The bloodless carnage also served to provide a clue to another villain with a completely different conduct, which evidently, also falls into this trope: He sucks the victim completely dry of blood, but he leaves the corpse.
  • This is the ONLY reason Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City were not given an M Rating, which many are still shocked that they didn't get even without any gore.
  • Destroy All Humans! usually justifies this by restricting you to weaponry that destroys your enemies too thoroughly for there to be any blood, disintegrating or incinerating them outright. The head explosions, though, use Green Blood.
  • In Dungeons nothing bleeds. You can have a hero mauled by monsters, run straight in a buzzsaw trap and get killed but still no blood.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • In Shadow the Hedgehog there is no blood OR gore. Sega planned on adding it in, but decided not to add it so the game would be rated E10+ instead of a T rating. You can't even actually KILL anyone besides the aliens (GUN soldiers just lie on the ground and call out for help.) Even though it is implied that in a few of the endings you killed Eggman by breaking his neck or destroyed the human race.
    • Maria Robotnik died of a gunshot wound. Despite this, her death is consistently depicted as bloodless. There's not a single drop of blood in any canon depiction, even in the uncensored version of Shadow the Hedgehog. It's made more noticeable because her dress is baby blue, which should stain very easily.
  • The first five games in the Tomb Raider series zig zags with the trope. Specks of blood can be seen flying when Lara shoots an enemy or she gets shot by an enemy gunner during the game. In cut scenes, there is no blood at all. Tomb Raider Legend and onward omits blood completely, despite the fact that the entire series always had a T rating. However, this is made up for the very gruesome death scenes (while still lacking blood) that occur should you fail a quick time event.
  • Contra did this by having every enemy Made of Explodium and your character a One-Hit Point Wonder.
  • In Brain Dead 13, despite all the horrible ways to die, none of them show any blood or gore. The only exception is that there is a scene with the red blood in the transfusion bag, and that is in the resurrection scene when Lance gets his blood back in the "Vivi's Salon" sequence.
  • In Fur Fighters, "Fluff" flies out whenever the player character or an enemy is shot, making this game good clean fun. Although averted with the blood cheat in PAL versions of the game, which replaces the kid-friendly fluff with... well, nasty, gushing blood.
  • In the FMV Light Gun Games made by American Laser Games, there is not a single drop of blood whenever anyone is shot. For some, it adds to the Narm Charm of the whole affair, especially with the flashier ways some of the enemies react.
  • In addition to there being no blood whatsoever in the early PlayStation titles of Medal of Honor, sometimes if you killed an enemy with a rocket from a Bazooka or Panzerfaust, he might even do a backflip mid-air and land on his face.
  • The bowdlerised version of No More Heroes removed all the blood (despite keeping in the swearing and sexual content) so every enemy killed would instead explode into ash when killed. This also translated into the cutscenes, resulting in some Narm.
  • There is no blood in Wolf. Meat is red, but that's as much blood as you'll ever see. The process of killing an animal - whether that's you killing your dinner or a hunter killing you - results in zero blood. Anyone who's ever seen a nature documentary of wolves around a goat knows the process of disembowelment and subsequent feeding normally results in blood covering the wolves' faces, or sometimes their entire front ends if they climb inside the carcass to get after a particularly tasty morsel.
  • The Assassin's Creed games as a whole adhere to this trope to a surprising degree, considering the point of the game is bloody assassination. The ketchup-stain variation of the trope is in full effect—sometimes when you get hit, you bleed for a few seconds before the stain disappears! You can stab, slash, and even break bones complete with crunchy sound effects, but bleeding is almost always minimal. When you kill animals for their hides, there's a Gory Discretion Shot when you skin them—and that's probably the goriest part of the game, since you're able to see red bones and rib cages afterward.
  • You have this as an option in Primal Rage.
  • Ditto in Jurassic Park Warpath.
  • Justified in The Matrix: Path of Neo as no matter how enemies get shot, stabbed or blown up their bodies disintegrate back into the Matrix's code. The only time you see any blood is during the in-game cut-scenes.
  • In the 2001 Xbox launch title Fuzion Frenzy and its sequel, many of the minigames involved blowing up other players with explosives, shooting and blowing up other players in tanks, or meleeing other players either with punches or kicks or with makeshift bludgeons. The second game even had giant hammers to whack other players with, pushing other players into incoming asteroids, using flamethrowers on other players, and making other players fall into lava. Yet the characters suffer nothing more than falling down and (sometimes) being eliminated from the minigame. Of course, this IS an E-rated game, which justifies this trope.
  • Neither of the PlanetSide MMOFPS games have any sort of blood despite soldiers being repeatedly run over, falling to their death, and being shot at by 150mm high-explosive cannons. The first game's alpha screenshots had blood which was removed from release, and the second game's trailer had copious amounts of blood.
  • Completely averted in Toonstruck, a point-and-click adventure game from the mid-90s that mixes cartoon violence with loads of blood. In one scene, a cat's brain is punched out of his skull, with gallons of blood dripping from it. Makes one wonder how this game didn't get an M rating.
  • In Cel Damage, there are a couple maps that have sheep wandering around, whom can be sliced in cartoon fashion (no blood, just a red inside with a visible bone half). Violet even slices one with a chainsaw in her ending. However, weapons such as the chainsaw, axe, etc., when used on players, only slices their car, while the character is flung out and left running.
  • In the Gamecube skateboarding game Go Go Hypergrind, the characters can be decapitated, and have holes blasted through their torsos, but due to the game running on standard cartoon logic, there is no blood.
  • Played with in htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary. Many of Mion's deaths can be pretty gruesome, which includes getting crushed by gears and being chopped up by buzzsaws. Luckily, she simply faints when she gets killed, her body never appearing physical harmed in any way. However, her "fainting" is accompanied by the screen being splattered with blood.
  • In SpyParty, The Sniper's target simply falls down when shot, signaling the end of the game.
  • In Juuzaengi the visual novel nature of the game means limited sprites and pictures. Unless there is a CG accompanying the scene, the only way to tell an injury is from context, the voice acting and their expressions.
  • You can hit villagers in Animal Crossing with tools, including axes, but they only ever seem annoyed instead of injured.
  • Titan Quest has you slay monsters all over ancient Greece, Egypt and the Orient, but none of them so much as spill a drop of blood. (And neither do you when you get hit.) Even if you swing two swords and use techniques that most closely approximate a blender, all that happens is that they fall over. As the game is Diablo-style, this is definitely something they could have implemented.
  • In Lost Dimension, this is the standard for battles, however, in the final battle with The End, his attacks will be shown to draw blood, which spatters on the ground and then disappears.
  • Hidden Expedition: The Eternal Emperor: Two characters are shot (one fatally). Not only do they not bleed, but their hazmat suits are undamaged — despite the fact that getting Gunshot Victim #2 out of the tomb before the mercury vapors finish him off is a plot point.
  • No blood is spilled in Starbound. Monsters and critters just poof on death, and humanoids vanish in a quick teleportation effect. (If a quest-important NPC is killed, the fail message says they probably respawned somewhere safer, so one can assume teleporters and respawners are in use for other people as well as the protagonist.) Even the victims in the prologue don't shed any visible blood. Of course, there are mods to correct this matter.
  • In Overwatch; the characters may bleed a bit when attacked, though they still don't spill blood or burst into bloody bits when turned into corpses.
  • The 2017 Steam game Zooicide is a team-based fighting game revolving around zoo animals trying to kill each other and the zookeepers that watch over them. While there's no blood shown the animals still fall apart to pieces of body parts filled with baloney. The gorilla even throws his troop like ammo to try and kill his opponents even if it costs them their lives.
  • Ōkami uses this flagrantly... with the in-game graphics. The cutscenes utilizing 2D art, on the other hand, avert this.
  • In Paladins, while there is some brief red splatter when characters get hurt, not a single drop of blood is spilled no matter how violent things get. In Grover and Bomb King's cases, it's justified as they don't have blood to spill in the first place.
  • Terraria: A new option introduced in 1.3 allows you to turn off blood and gibs, instead making enemies and characters disappear into clouds of smoke upon death similar to Minecraft, which can make it easier to spot enemy drops without mountains of body parts in the way. It does cause a few oddities with enemies that constantly bleed (or if you're bleeding) causes those same puffs to appear such as Demon Eyes or the shoulder points of Skeletron.
  • In Chex Quest, a Game Mod for Doom, the enemies (Flemoids) didn't die, they just rather got sent back to their own dimension; similarly, the player character doesn't die, but merely gets "slimed." This was all a matter of documentation interpretation and using green slime instead of red blood.
  • The Bowdlerised portable version of Doom, which was rated T for Teen, turns all enemies' blood green, and change the face of Doomguy so instead of bloodied as his health lowers, he looks increasingly tired instead.
  • The enemies in SUPERHOT don't bleed, but instead shatter into pieces like glass.
  • Despite being undoubtedly the most violent Spider-Man game to date, Spider-Man (PS4) features almost no blood whatsoever in combat (you can only see very little of it if you look really carefully for a few frames), despite Spidey possessing a myriad of finishing moves that would definitely put a person in an emergency room in real life. Averted in the cutscene of Jefferson Davis' death, however.
  • Any video game (not the Visual Novel or any Animated Adaptation) based on the Nasuverse didn't have blood in many of their actions except for a scant few non-interactive scenes if any. This includes Fate/unlimited codes, Fate/EXTRA,Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star, Fate/Grand Ordernote  and Fate/Extella Link. Ironically one of the first Nasuverse's official games is called Melty Blood, which also lacks blood too, except for a few non-interactive stills.
  • Any Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game except the very first DOTA (which was a mod for Warcraft III which normally averts this), due to the T rating attracts more prospective players in the very competitive genre.
  • BLACK, no matter how carnage-y the First-Person Shooter action is, there is no blood, however it was rated M because of strong language.
  • Halo downplays it, blood existed but not to the point of bloodbath, even blood pools appear far less often than it should be. Bafflingly, the ESRB gave it an M rating while other bloody games such as Starcraft and Star Wars: Republic Commando (partly justified due to most of the blood are either droid oil or Alien Blood) got away with T rating.
  • Destiny and its sequel Destiny 2 plays it almost completely straight. While red blood did exist, it's only Played for Drama in cutscenes without being too overexaggerated or violent, while in regular gameplay the game resorts to dark-colored smoke as a result of Boom, Headshot! to the alien races, and spark effects for the mechanical enemies and energy or power attacks.
  • Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles: Altair takes down many a Templar in this game, and not a single drop of blood is shed.

    Web Animation 
  • Death Battle: Despite having several gruesome deaths and injuries (it is called Death Battle after all), there were a few battles in which no blood was spilled. In other cases, the entire fight is more or less bloodless until the killing blow.
  • Even though Lewis dies just barely off the edge of the screen, with the spire that tore through his torso and his torn clothes making it into the frame, and Arthur's arm is seen in Mystery's mouth directly after being torn off there is no blood seen in Mystery Skulls Animated. There has even been an on-screen decapitation, but the character that happened to is not human and likely has no blood to show.
  • RWBY:
    • Justified: Every human (or faunus) character in the setting has an Aura which comes from the human soul and, as Jaune Arc puts it, "works like a forcefield". Hence, despite all the bullets and Absurdly Sharp Blades whizzing around, human characters never take serious hits unless their Aura is depleted.
    • While this trope is generally in full effect, there are a few notable aversions. When Weiss gets punched by the knight armor in the White trailer, blood runs down her forehead over her eye. In "Beginning of the End," Mercury's bloody, bandaged legs are on full display when Cinder and Emerald arrive to recruit his father. In "Heroes and Monsters," Adam can be briefly seen flicking Yang's blood off his sword after cutting off her arm. A brief shot in the next episode shows the remainder of Yang's arm wrapped in bloody bandages. Adam once again wipes blood off of his sword after impaling Sienna Khan in "Dread in the Air", and this time it's focused on quite clearly.
  • The very first Madness Combat flash, in contrast to the rest of the series, has no blood at all despite Hank killing thirty characters.

  • In Erfworld, Erfworlders have blood, but nobody bleeds at all. At all. And there have been some pretty grievous wounds inflicted in Erfworld, including multiple limbs torn off, a man hit in the head with a crossbow bolt that entered through his eye, a dwagon's head ripped off, a dwagon's jaw being ripped off, a dwagon eating several marbits alive, and several dozen Woodsy Elves being torn limb from limb. Not one single drop of blood has been seen in battle and the leftover blood in the mouth of a feeding Transylvitan evaporates almost instantly when he stops.
    • Most off-putting is when we see several badly wounded dwagons, damaged to the point that their muscles and bones are exposed. And still, they don't bleed.
    • All of the terms in Erfworld are cuter and friendlier, and the physical rules of the universe actually censor swear words. The majority of the strip's comedy comes from the fact that it's a violent war waged in a world where everything is cuddly and (superficially) kid-friendly. To some it's comedy, to others it's quite disturbing.
    • Parson Gotti is exempt due to being from the real world. Lampshaded in book 3:
      Parson: Well, good. 'Cause, um... I'm bleeding.
      Marie: Yes. You do thot. It's gross.
  • Rumors of War, true to its inspiration (SNES-era JRPGs, among others) contains no bloodshed. This despite one character having all his skin removed, and another being the victim of Cold-Blooded Torture. No blood.
  • Given that The Order of the Stick is a stick figure comic, the trope is justified. Stabs and slashes leave red marks on the victim (so you can tell that the person was hit), but we never see blood splatters, and more serious wounds such as decapitations have no blood marks at all (maybe except Miko being cut in half, but there is still just the wound mark, no blood splatter). This comic is one of the most obvious ones.
  • Omnitopia The Playground uses an art style similar to the Order of the Stick. Within the first fifty strips, characters get hit on the head with a club, stabbed in the chest with a sword, and get their heads chopped up with little to no blood appearing aside from the occasional red mark showing when an attack hit.
  • Zigzagged in Commander Kitty. Early in the comic's run, Moose's freshly-amputated antlers are a bloody mess, but later, after Socks' brain is removed, the top of his head comes off like a hat.
  • The Titan's remains in Latchkey Kingdom seem more like rubble than gore. Though it was alive, what it was made of is unknown, so it may not have had blood.

    Web Original 
  • The narration of The Questport Chronicles tends to skate over any violence during the (frequent) fight scenes, unless the injuries are relevant to the plot.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • In Samurai Jack this trope is in effect when Jack fights organic creatures, rather than the oil-spewing Mecha-Mooks. They are never messily ripped to pieces as the robots are, just given a bloodless slash from his sword or obscured by an explosion. Magical beings tend to turn to dust or vaporize. And Jack himself never seems to bleed, no matter how he writhes in pain and screams in agony as his clothing is ripped away. (Although he does have visible wounds.) Heavily subverted in the fifth season. The revival isn't afraid to show blood; there was blood oozing from Jack's stab wound, and Jack even manages to slash the throat of one of the Daughters of Aku.
  • DC Animated Universe:
    • Justice League uses blood rarely, for dramatic scenes only as well. Epitomized in "Chaos at the Earth's Core", where two armies of sword-swinging warriors clashed, with several soldiers getting cut down on-screen, with nary a drop of blood to be seen. Though throughout both series, crisp, clean, and often brutal action sequences combined with a punishing and varied series of sound effects (and good voice acting) makes the viewer almost feel the impacts, blows, punches, explosions, magic, bullets, etc. It feels a lot more violent than it is showing.
    • One episode where this was cleverly used, however, was "The Enemy Below", where Aquaman cuts off his own hand to save his infant son. In order to avoid the amount of blood, what did the animators do? They had him wrap the stump with the baby's red cloth, which appears soaked when he shows up at the palace.
    • In the Splicers episode of Batman Beyond, Terry rips Ramrod's nose ring off resulting in no ill effect to Ramrod. No blood, no nothing, he's perfectly fine.
    • A woman tears out her earrings (It Makes Sense in Context) bloodlessly in an early Batman Beyond episode.
    • The pilot episode to Beyond averted this by showing Terry with a bloody mouth during a battle with The Dragon.
    • Batman: The Animated Series usually played this straight however some aversions exist. For example, in "Mad Love" Harley Quinn is shown bleeding from the mouth after having been pushed out the window several stories, by The Joker.
  • In Fantastic Four, a Flashback actually shows Ulysses Klaw killing Black Panther's father with a real gun instead of a Family Friendly Firearm (though the shot itself is fired offscreen). Despite this, there's no blood or wounds of any sort on the corpse.
  • Incredible Hulk:
    • No matter how violent things get or how badly people get smacked around, there's never any blood.
    • Jennifer Walters is badly wounded in an explosion, which requires Bruce Banner to give her a transfusion of his irradiated blood to save her life, thus turning her into She-Hulk. Despite her injuries being so severe that she would've died without Bruce's intervention, there's no blood or burn marks anywhere on her body.
  • X-Men:
    • Usually played straight, even for Wolverine, a character with a Healing Factor. While it was not uncommon to see characters bandaged or in a hospital bed after being injured, there was almost never any blood shown.
    • A rare aversion came in the Season 1 finale. Magneto was briefly shown bleeding from his mouth during his fight with the Sentinels, and when the X-Men later found him unconscious, his torso was covered in blood. Subsequent reruns of the episode reportedly edited the scene to tone down the blood, which likely explains why similar gore was mostly absent from the rest of the series' run.
  • The Simpsons:
  • In the Family Guy episode "There's Something About Paulie," Big Fat Paulie gets shot with dozens of bullets but doesn't bleed at all.
  • This is used straight in the first battle sequence in Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight (with orcs being blatantly stabbed with no blood), but then avoided in a later battle scene where splashes of red follow sword slashes. But then, given the odd mix of traditional and CGI animation, consistency was probably not to be expected. The Dragonlance settings has no Orcs, it was probably a Hobgoblin or Draconian.
  • Redwall has Matthias cuts off Asmodeus' head onscreen, but nary a drop of blood appears. In the TV series, this is subverted with Cheesethief's death, and in the graphic novel as well, where Asmodeus bleeds excessively.
  • Any given episode of Tom and Jerry will have some bloodless carnage in there somewhere. Looney Tunes, too.
  • In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, pretty much anyone who gets injured or killed will almost never bleed. As stated above, usually justified since lightsabers and blasters cauterize the wounds before they can bleed, and droids don't have any blood in them so they can be sliced in two or ripped to pieces regardless. Even in the cases where an actual bladed weapon is used on flesh-and-blood, expect the struck foe to fall at an angle that conveniently hides the wounds, but even then there isn't even a blood spray.
  • As they are both Darker and Edgier, both Ben 10: Alien Force and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien have a concerning amount of violence, all without blood. It's still technically a kids show, but in episodes like "Time Heals" and "Fused" when Ben gets the complete and total crap beat out of him in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown (which seems to happen to him a lot), a little bit of blood would make sense, even when he's an alien. After all, they made a big deal out of "Ben can get hurt now!" in the very first episode of Alien Force.
  • In Teen Titans Robin spends all of the episode "Haunted" being beaten into a piece of raw hamburger by Slade. By the end he's got tons of bruises and scrapes, but still not an ounce of the red stuff to be seen. Though to be fair, Robin's costume is red, so there might be some there that we just can't make out.
  • Invader Zim allows organs and the like to be fully exposed and other disturbing content, but not a drop of blood except for the Bloody Gir image. Averted in "Game Slave 2" where Gaz watches a promo for a video game which covers the entire screen with vampire piggy blood. Danielle Koenig mentions this on the commentary, where they previously had to change the colour of the word diarrhea from brown to red, which ultimately made it look a lot worse than previously intended. "Red things can be red, but brown things can't be brown."
  • Blood almost never showed up in Young Justice, no matter how severe the physical violence. Two rare examples would be Red Arrow bleeding from the nose and mouth after being beaten up by The Flash, and Mercy Graves bleeding from the face after her battle with Arsenal. Fake blood seems okay on the show since it's been used to fake deaths quite a few times with no attempts to hide it.
  • There's almost no bloodletting in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes!. This is especially notable since one of the main characters, Black Panther, usually attacks enemies with his razor-sharp claws.
  • Sym-Bionic Titan has a very noticeable example, as one character is run through with a saber and despite it killing them there isn't any blood or even a wound in the next shot.
  • Used to a ridiculous extent in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003). Particularly notable examples include the episode "Same as it Never Was", which features characters getting sliced, stomped on, and blown up on-screen with nary a drop of blood on their corpses. Karai impales Leo on her sword in "Exodus" without a single drop of red. A few episodes later, Leonardo loses his temper and slices Splinter across the forehead during a spar. Splinter immediately grabs the spot and later is shown with bandages, but nothing, not even a red line, can actually be seen. Justified when Leo beheads the Shredder. Said character isn't actually human, just a robotic body, so it would make sense for there to be no blood. The 2012 cartoon also has this with Mikey's wound in "Vengeance is Mine", a cut deep enough to wear him down and require medical attention later, but doesn't show on his skin.
  • Averted on Dink, the Little Dinosaur. In the fourth episode of the series, entitled White Beauty. A dinosaur that has been outcast from society gets into a fight with Tyrannor, and Amber runs off to get help. When the gang comes back to the scene of the battle, there's a trail of blood that they follow to where the dinosaur is hiding out.
  • In Courage the Cowardly Dog, no matter what horrible thing happened to Courage or Eustace, they never bled.
  • ThunderCats (2011):
    • During The Siege of Thundera. A sky full of arrows, Claudus cutting through a wave of Lizards, even Claudus getting stabbed In the Back and falling into a pool of water, not one drop of blood is found.
    • Played with in "Song of the Petalars" the Cats cut and shoot through Lizard troops bloodlessly, but Tygra's shots are shown to pierce the Lizard's bodies.
  • Generally justified in BIONICLE, as the biomechanical Toa and Matoran don't have blood. However, that doesn't explain why, in the movie The Legend Reborn, Mata Nui could cut off the tail of a Vorox (an organic, mammalian creature) and have only a few sparks appear. Most likely the writers either didn't know better or didn't care.
  • The Futurama Season 6 episode "The Prisoner of Benda", a man gets his arm cut off by a flying sword, only to show a series of rings representing his skin, body mass, and bone. Season 7 partially averts this in "The Tip of the Zoidberg", where a torso-separated Leela is hopping by the waist in a small pool of her own blood. In "A Farewell To Arms" both Fry and Leela get an arm ripped off, and neither bleeds.
  • The Adventure Time episode "Princess Monster Wife" has the Ice King stealing body parts from various princesses in order to make his wife, including the heart and intestines.
  • Though not carnage, per se, Code Lyoko had one scene in which Yumi had cut her hand on broken glass. Though scratches were seen, blood was absent.
  • This is almost entirely averted in Gravity Falls as, since the season one finale, characters have explicitly been shown to bleed, and creatures such as the Shapeshifter shed Alien Blood. In one particularly jarring moment in Northwest Mansion Mystery, the haunting is first signified by having mounted animal heads bleed copious amounts of red blood from their eyes and mouths.
  • Conan the Adventurer makes heavy use of this, with the protagonists all wielding starmetal weapons that instantly banish the enemy Serpent-men to the Abyss. This is even made into a plot point; in the last three episodes, when the doorway between worlds is opened, the Serpent-men do still disintegrate on touch, but reform close by and almost instantly, making their numbers truly limitless. Something that is also shown in an early episode with a Bad Future plot.
  • The French educational cartoons of the Il était une fois... franchise rarely show blood. This in spite of the messy battles that happen on multiple occasions, with people dying on-screen from weapon wounds.
  • In The Hobbit, enemies struck by Sting seem to spiral off into Hammerspace instead of properly dying.
  • In Shadow Raiders hundreds die on a regular basis but the Beast Drones' weapons vaporize them so there's no blood. And the drones themselves explode when destroyed. Though, when characters are killed with different weapons that leave bodies there's no blood either.
  • In The Smurfs Springtime Special when the wizard Balthazar tries to shoot Papa Smurf with his blunderbuss, Smurfette's pet duck Ducky dives in the way of the bullet's path and is killed instead, there is no blood on his body.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Justified as most of the main characters are gems whose physical forms are illusions. They "poof" into their gems when severely damaged and crush when they're terminally damaged. They have been depicted bruised up when less severely hurt as well. Steven, a half-human boy, ends up with a nasty bruise in the season 1 finale, so they're not avoiding human damage though.
    • When Lars is killed, he's scraped up and his clothes are torn, but there is no blood visible anywhere. However, his hair falls in such a way that it covers his right eye, which sports a nasty scar once he's resurrected by Steven. This implies his eye was hit by shrapnel from the explosion, meaning his hair must have been hiding a very bloody wound.
  • American Dragon: Jake Long:
  • Kaeloo: Despite all the things Mr. Cat does to Quack Quack, which even includes using chainsaws and knives, there is not a drop of blood to be seen anywhere.
  • Bloodless carnage was often used for sight gags during The Golden Age of Animation. Examples include:
  • Averted in the Jem episode "Journey to Shangri-La", where some blood can be seen when Roxy cuts her hand on some thorns.
  • Averted in the Captain Planet episode "Mind Pollution" (also known as the drug Very Special Episode). Linka's cousin Boris starts bleeding profusely after being hit with glass.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender: Most of the battles that take place outside of the Lions involve Galran Mecha-Mooks, but the few on-screen deaths don't involve any visible injury, even from people being slashed with blades or shot with a variety of energy weapons.
  • Wild Kratts, although it doesn't shy away from showing predators gulping down their prey, avoids displaying actual bloodshed. Predators may grapple their prey with claws, but only grip rather than inflict visible wounds. When actual carcasses are shown, they're either cleanly-intact or already disassembled into anonymous non-dripping chunks. Injured animals may limp or drag a wing, but won't visibly bleed.
  • In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, if ponies or other creatures are fighting, they punch, kick and headbutt each other - which is how animals fight in real life - but they never seem to get hurt. Even at the show's absolute darkest, King Sombra's Family-Unfriendly Death where he's disintegrated on-screen and you even see his flesh melt away from the muscle underneath (it happens), you don't see so much as a single drop of blood. Other characters that die on-screen tend to be magical entities who melt, disintegrate, or poof away in a flash of magic rather than showing any blood.

     Real Life 
  • Surprisingly, this trope can happen in real life. It's possible for predatory animals to do damage or kill a animal without drawing much or any blood depending on where they bite their prey. Canine jaws and teeth crush in such a way that they often don't cause any blood splatter or spraying.


Video Example(s):


Zelda cuts off Ganon's hand

Princess Zelda shoots a beam with the Triforce of Power to sever Ganon's hand without a drop of blood.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (5 votes)

Example of:

Main / BloodlessCarnage

Media sources:

Main / BloodlessCarnage